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Two astronauts replace ISS camera and docking aid on 6th-ever all-female spacewalk (video)
Sophie Adenot and Jessica Meir were outside the ISS for six hours and 49 minutes on the sixth-ever all-female extravehicular activity.
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Two astronauts replaced a spacecraft docking aid and a video camera during a successful spacewalk outside of the International Space Station on Tuesday (Sept. 1).
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot got through most of the tasks set out for them even in light of Adenot's spacesuit developing a mobility issue late in the extravehicular activity (EVA), which lasted six hours and 49 minutes.
After beginning the spacewalk from the U.S. Quest airlock at 8:40 a.m. EDT (1240 GMT), Meir and Adenot set about the first and most important activity of the outing: replacing the planar deflector on the forward port of the station's Harmony Node 2. The retroreflector is used to support navigation during rendezvous and docking operations by visiting spacecraft. The older reflector that they replaced had become coated in thruster residue from earlier spacecraft arrivals and departures.
They also replaced the Camera Port 3 (CP3) high-definition (HD) camera on the station's truss.
"And it's off!" reported Meir after freeing the spent camera assembly that was swapped out for spare. Her words were met by applause in Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
From there, Adenot headed off to continue an ongoing scientific study by swabbing areas on the exterior of the airlock and her gloves for possible microorganisms. Meir, meanwhile, rode one end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm to a site near the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), torquing 46 bolts in preparation for future maintenance of the particle physics detector.
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Meir also relocated power and thermal jumper cables and an articulating portable foot restraint for use on a later spacewalk.