WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th October, 2019) Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) will perform a series of ten spacewalks over the next three months to replace batteries and repair an aging particle physics instrument, NASA said on Friday.
"The station crew will replace some of the orbiting laboratory's solar array batteries during the first half of the spacewalks and then refurbish a renowned scientific instrument that explores the fundamental nature of the universe during the final five excursions," NASA said in a press release.
ISS Program Manager Kirk Shireman said in a televised press conference that the batteries used on the ISS are not like the ones for ordinary use such as in flashlights.
"These are really big batteries to store energy from the sun in our giant solar arrays, critical for maintaining and operating the International Space Station," Shireman said.
Astronauts will replace old nickel-hydrogen batters with new lithium-ion batteries during five spacewalks over a ten-day period, the release said.
Another five space walks beginning in November will replace cooling pumps and the coolant - liquid carbon dioxide - in a machine known as the Alfa Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS).
The AMS is designed to measure sub-atomic particles from incoming cosmic rays, Shireman said.
NASA likened the pace of the upcoming mission to the series of spacewalks needed to complete assembling the space station in 2011.
