NASA flight director discusses curtailed spacewalk

The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that carried four astronauts to the International Space Station in November broke the record Sunday for the longest spaceflight by a U.S. crew vehicle, surpassing the 84-day mark set by an Apollo capsule on the final flight to the Skylab space station in 1974.

With plans for the first all-female spacewalk derailed by suit sizing issues, astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague floated outside the International Space Station Friday for a revised excursion to help fix a solar array battery problem and to connect a second set of replacement batteries as originally planned.

SpaceX is set to resume launches from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral in December with the liftoff of a space station-bound supply ship on top of a Falcon 9 booster, a major step in boosting the company’s flight rate and readying for the debut of the long-delayed Falcon Heavy rocket.