Space to Ground: October Spacewalks: Oct. 06, 2023

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

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Welcome to space to ground. I am kayla lafrance. With their space legs now under them, the expedition 70 crew is currently preparing for a pair of space walks this month. On october 12th, nasa astronaut loral o’hara and esa astronaut andy mogensen will team up and exit through the station’s quest airlock, where they will replace a high-definition camera on the port truss of the station and conduct other maintenance work to prepare for future spacewalks to upgrade the station’s alpha magnetic spectrometer. Also planned for this eva, is an experiment where the orbiting laboratory itself is the subject.

The spacewalkers will traverse the exterior of the station to collect samples on the surface of the modules. These samples will be returned to the ground for analysis to see if microorganisms are released and survive outside of station. Microorganisms like bacteria and fungi live on and around humans, and before explorers search for life elsewhere, investigators look to identify the microorganisms that may be transported with crew members into space. The samples will be taken near life support system vents, to examine whether the spacecraft releases microorganisms, how many, and how far they may have traveled. This research could help determine whether changes are needed to crewed spacecraft, including spacesuits, used to explore destinations where life may exist now or existed previously, and to limit the spread of human contamination as we move beyond low earth orbit and on to mars.

On october 20th, loral o’hara will once again venture outside of the space station, this time she will be accompanied by nasa astronauts jasmin moghbeli. The dynamic duo will work together to complete the removal of a faulty electronics box, called a radio frequency group from a communications antenna on the starboard truss of the station. They will also replace one of twelve trundle bearing assemblies on the port truss solar alpha rotary joint that stalled recently before resuming its normal operation. The tbas enable the station’s solar arrays to rotate properly to track the sun as the station orbits the earth. This will be jasmin’s first spacewalk and the second for loral.

As always, live coverage will be provided for both spacewalks, so follow us on social media, or watch it on nasa television, the nasa app, or the agency’s website. You won’t want to miss it. And that’s space to ground for this week. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next week!

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