![]() NASA and the United States are part of a global rush back to the Moon. But one way or another, the United States is finally getting back into the Moon game. Maybe it will make its desired soft landing. And one way or another, it is going to the Moon. This sucker will be launched within a month or two on a Falcon 9 rocket. And standing before me, 4.3 meters tall, is a real-life lunar lander. It is where a small company called Intuitive Machines builds machines designed to land on the Moon. I am standing in a gleaming facility in Houston, a few kilometers from the storied Johnson Space Center, in a facility formally known as the Lunar Production and Operations Center. There are various reasons for this, including a sharp focus by NASA on exploration of Mars. Since that time, the Soviet Union, China, and India have successfully landed there, but the United States has gone elsewhere. NASA has not sent a spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. The EVA was the 11th for the year, the third for Expedition 68 and 256th since 1998 in support of assembly and maintenance of the ISS.HOUSTON-It has been 18,558 days since the United States landed a spacecraft on the Moon. They now have logged 14 hours and 16 minutes working the vacuum of space. Saturday's excursion was the second spacewalk in both astronauts' careers. To the station we bring new power, more power generation restored than ever, so let MCC be heard to the ISS," said flight director Zeb Scoville as the team in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston broke into applause at the conclusion of the spacewalk. "This is the kind of day that makes you want to clap your hands. In photos: The amazing spacewalks of Expedition 61Ĭassada and Rubio completed their spacewalk cleaning up and taking inventory of their tools before reentering the airlock at 2:21 p.m. The International Space Station: Facts, history and tracking The most memorable spacewalks in history By Rubio isolating a section of the impacted array - which was one of several damaged strings - flight controllers expected to be able to restore 75% of the 1B array's functionality. Station systems normally powered by the 1B channel were switched over to use electricity from the 1A power channel with no impact to station operations.īy disconnecting one of four power connectors, Rubio restored redundancy for the affected systems after an unexpected short, or tripping was observed on the 1B channel on Nov. Rubio, meanwhile, moved over to the outboard solar array wing (1B) to disconnect a cable.įlight controllers recently changed electrical power routing to remove the IB power channel from use to ensure its batteries were being charged at expected levels. Cassada returned to the iROSA carrier to begin freeing the second array as a get-ahead task for the next spacewalk now planned for Dec. With their iROSA work done and mission control seeing good power flowing through the newly-installed array, Cassada and Rubio split ways. NASA astronauts Josh Cassada (at bottom right) and Frank Rubio work outside of the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Saturday, Dec. When used in tandem, the upgraded power system will increase the station's electricity supply by 20 to 30 percent.Ī similar set of rollout arrays, only longer and deployed remotely, will be used to power NASA's Gateway lunar orbit platform when it is launched in the coming years. The roll-out solar arrays are being installed in front of, and partially overlaying, the station's older, slightly-degraded solar panel wings. Once the iROSA was fully-deployed, a process that took about 10 minutes, Cassada tightened two bolts to stiffen the array and its installation was complete. "That is incredible," sad Cassada, watching the solar array deploy. The potential energy held by the array's rolled-up carbon composite booms was enough for it to unroll its full 63-foot (19 meter) length with no motor needed. Working in the dark, when the legacy solar array wings were not generating electricity, the astronauts ran cables to tie the new iROSA into the station's power supply.īack in daylight, Cassada released two bolts and the iROSA began to unfurl. With the new array positioned atop its previously-installed bracket mount, Cassada and Rubio unfolded the iROSA assembly and then tightening bolts to hold it in place. A new International Space Station (ISS) Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) is seen unfurling after NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio installed it in place during a spacewalk on Saturday, Dec.
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