Astronauts Conduct 6-Hour Spacewalk To Boost Space Station’s Power Supply

Two astronauts stepped outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, Jan. 13, to carry out a 6-hour spacewalk for replacing aging batteries for the power grid of the laboratory. The recent upgrade will boost and keep the ISS running into the next decade, according to NASA.

The nearly 6 and a half hour spacewalk was jointly performed by U.S. astronaut Shane Kimbrough and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Incidentally, this was the fourth spacewalk of Kimbrough's career and the first one for Pesquet. The duo left the ISS' airlock at around 6:30 a.m. EST to carry out the task of replacing the batteries and complete numerous other maintenance chores before stepping back inside the space laboratory just before 12:30 p.m. EST.

The astronauts continued the work started during a spacewalk earlier in January to fit an array of 428-pound lithium-ion battery packs to the ISS' solar power system. "The new lithium-ion batteries and adapter plates replace the nickel-hydrogen batteries currently used on the station to store electrical energy generated by the station's solar arrays," NASA stated. "These new batteries provide an improved power capacity for operations with a lighter mass and a smaller volume than the nickel-hydrogen batteries."

The first six of the new 24 lithium-ion batteries were transported to the space station in December aboard a Japanese HTV cargo ship. The remaining 18 new lithium-ion battery packs will be taken to the ISS via Japanese resupply missions in the future.

According to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, it will take three more years to complete the flying space laboratory's power system upgrade that will keep it functional till at least 2024. The ISS is solar powered and draws power from its batteries while flying through darkness. The International Space Station is a $100 billion research laboratory that is owned and operated by 16 countries and is as big as a five-bedroom house, as per a Reuters report.