Astronauts prep space station for new solar wings
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving later this year at the International Space Station.
NASA’s Victor Glover, previously stationed in Virginia Beach, and Kate Rubins emerged from the orbiting lab lugging 8-foot duffle-style bags stuffed with hundreds of pounds of mounting brackets and struts. The equipment was so big and awkward that it had to be taken apart like furniture, just to get through the hatch.
“We know it’s super tight in there,” Mission Control radioed.
With more people and experiments flying on the space station, more power will be needed to keep everything running, according to NASA. The six new solar panels — to be delivered in pairs by SpaceX over the coming year or so — should boost the station’s electrical capability by as much as 30%.
Rubins and Glover had to assemble and bolt down the struts for the first two solar panels, due to launch in June.
The eight solar panels up there now are 12 to 20 years old — most of them past their design lifetime and deteriorating. Each panel is 112 feet long by 39 feet wide. Tip to tip counting the center framework, each pair stretches 240 feet, longer than a Boeing 777’s wingspan.
Boeing is supplying the new roll-up panels, about half the size of the old ones but just as powerful thanks to the latest solar cell technology. They’ll be placed at an angle above the old ones, which will continue to operate.
A prototype was tested at the space station in 2017.
The views from Rubins’ new high-definition helmet camera were stunning, particularly those showing the vivid blue Earth 270 miles below.