Another spacewalk has been charted on the calendar to take place on Sunday, Feb. 28 as NASA astronauts prepare for the installation process of the ISS Roll Out Solar Arrays. Kathleen Rubins and Victor Glover will be leaving their orbital lab and setting up the worksite with a modification kit prior to the second spacewalk where astronauts will install the new solar arrays. You can watch the US EVA-71 live stream below.
Spacewalks typically occur between the time frame of five to eight hours once departing from their vehicle, this is why a spacewalk is referred to as an EVA (extravehicular activity). Glover was a part of the flight crew overseeing the first operational flight of the Dragon 2 vehicle for human exploration on mission SpX USCV-1. Rubins became the 60th woman to fly in space once launching a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Center, later on being involved in Expeditions 48 and 49.
Both NASA astronauts will be laying the foundation in the iROSAs process as these new arrays are meant to be larger than that of the Roll-Out Solar Array from the deployment test in June 2017. Currently, eight of the arrays are able to produce 160 kilowatts of power during orbital daytime however, to continue supporting the space station’s research the arrays will add more than an additional 20 kilowatts of electricity. This will total 120 kilowatts of increased power.
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