Spacewalking astronauts installing new door for visitors

Nasa ultimately wants two of these ports at the lab. A second IDA is expected to be attached in 2018. “Congratulations to the entire team”.

The spacewalk will be done by NASA’s Kate Rubins and Jeff Williams, and begins at 8:05 AM ET.

The astronauts will then venture outside the ISS to attach the adapter to the Pressurised Mating Adapter.

The station’s 58-foot robotic arm, controlled by engineers on the ground, removed the roughly 1,000-pound ring from the trunk Wednesday night and positioned it a few feet from the Harmony module.

The adapter’s upgrades include an automatic parking system and fittings that allow the ISS and the spacecraft to share data and power.

After all the cables and hook sensors were good to go, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, inside the station, issued a command for the hooks to close, permanently affixing the IDA to PMA-2. The funding for the space station will not be extended beyond 2024 because NASA will leave low-Earth orbit to go to the moon, Mars and far, far away galaxies.

The adapter launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship last month, and NASA has called the equipment “a metaphorical gateway to a future”. NASA will provide most, perhaps all, of the initial test pilots.

SpaceX is targeting a test flight a year from now, and Boeing in February 2018.

NASA plans to sell off the International Space Station (ISS) to a commercial operator around the mid-2020s.

The new port will allow astronauts traveling with companies such as Boeing and SpaceX to enter the station.

The new spacecraft will give NASA astronauts their first independent access to space since the shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.

Bolting on a door may not sound like big news, but once the ISS is able to accept Dragon capsules and CST-100 Starliners, it will effectively end Russia’s domination of space transportation.

Nasa received 11 submissions “from a broad range of respondents including individuals, small companies and large companies”, Sam Scimemi, division director for the ISS programme, said in an email. “It’s a huge milestone in our program”.

It is “a significant milestone in NASA’s work to return crew launches to U.S. soil”, the agency said in a statement.

The ISS is well-suited to research in areas like health to materials sciences, and as a testbed for technologies that could be used for missions deeper into space. The longest EVA to date was done by STS- 102 crew members Susan J. Helms and James S. Voss in 2001 and lasted eight hours and fifty-six minutes.

Astronaut Kate Rubins and Expedition 48 Cmdr.

“You’ve got the best view, that’s great”, Marshburn replied.

Williams assured flight controllers that his helmet was dry.