NASA’s Anil Menon and European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot returned to the International Space Station’s Quest airlock, closed the hatch and began repressurizing at 2:52 p.m. EDT, bringing a six-hour 23-minute spacewalk to a close.
It was the 282nd EVA devoted to station assembly and maintenance, the fifth so far this year, the second for Menon and the first for Adenot, now the first French woman to walk in space. Total ISS EVA time now stands at 74 days 10 hours and 44 minutes since station assembly began in 1998. Menon’s total to date is 12 hours and 50 minutes.
Today’s excursion was only partially successful. Menon and Adenot successfully removed a failed space-to-ground antenna, but freeing tight power and data cables, installing locking pins in the antenna’s gimbal assembly and unbolting it from its boom took longer than expected even with a fair amount of elbow grease turning a ratchet wrench.
In the end, flight controllers decided there wasn’t enough time for the spacewalkers to move the failed antenna to its permanent storage location or to retrieve the spare antenna and install it. Instead, the failed antenna was lashed down near its boom, where it will remain indefinitely, and its replacement remains bolted to a storage platform.
The ISS is equipped with two such antennas and only one is needed for normal operations. But it’s a critical system, and managers would like to have two healthy antennas in place for redundancy.
Another spacewalk is on tap next Tuesday, and flight controllers are considering whether to get the replacement antenna installed then or whether to stick with already planned tasks and defer the antenna replacement to a future EVA.
