On Thursday, February 15, 2018, two astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station (ISS) of NASA to move components for the station’s robotic system into long-term storage.
A Japanese and an American astronaut floated outside the ISS on a spacewalk to repair the orbiting outpost’s robotic arm. The spacewalk is the first for Japanese Aerospace Agency (JAXA) astronaut Norishige Kanai, and the fourth for his US counterpart Mark Vande Hei. Kanai is the fourth Japanese astronaut to walk in space.
The astronauts moved a spare hand-piece, called the Latching End Effector (LEE), from a storage spot outside the ISS into the Quest airlock so it can be returned to Earth on a future cargo mission for refurbishment and eventual relaunch. The current LEE was last replaced in October 2017 during Expedition 53.
The American Space Agency said: “The spacewalk will be the 208th in support of space station assembly and maintenance and the third this year.” The last Expedition 54 space walk took place on February 2, and lasted over eight hours and 13 minutes. Today’s mission lasted for about 6 hours.
These spacewalks not only help the astronauts repair and fix the space station but also gives them an opportunity to test new equipments. They can fix the equipments there only, instead of bringing them back to earth.