Video: NASA officials preview space station battery replacement spacewalks

Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Terry Virts floated outside the International Space Station Saturday and installed wiring needed for two new docking mechanisms that will be attached later this year for use by Boeing and SpaceX crew capsules.

Picking up where they left off last week, two space station astronauts ventured back outside the outpost Wednesday to continue the replacement of aging batteries in the lab’s solar power system. Two more spacewalks later this month should complete the multi-year project.

Space station commander Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren carried out a busy but mostly trouble-free spacewalk Friday, routing ammonia coolant back to the prime radiator used by one of the lab’s solar arrays and bypassing a secondary radiator that was activated three years ago to help pinpoint a coolant leak.