International Space Station Astronauts Walk in Space - East Idaho News
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International Space Station Astronauts Walk in Space

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070913 SpacewalkNASA2?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1373388643777NASA TV(HOUSTON) — Watching a maintenance person live stream his or her work for several hours seems like a waste of bandwidth. But if those maintenance people are in space patching up the International Space Station? Completely different.

Earlier today, at 8:02 a.m. ET, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano exited the ISS via the Quest airlock and flipped their spacesuits to battery power, officially beginning their space walk. Their walk was streamed for the duration of their estimated 6.5 hour excursion. The stream switches between the astronauts’ point of view and shots of Houston’s Mission Control Center.

[ WATCH LIVE: Astronauts Patch Up ISS ]

This is the first spacewalk of Parmitano’s career, as well as the first spacewalk among all Italian astronauts. For Cassidy, it may as well just be another Tuesday, as this is his fifth spacewalk.

Several of the tasks that the two astronauts are working on revolve around getting rid of old or broken equipment attached to the outside of the ISS.

In addition to giving the space station a good pruning, Cassidy will begin rerouting power to prepare the ISS for a new laboratory module. The new addition, named Nauka, will include another research facility, docking port and airlock.

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