SpaceX launched a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a successful unpiloted flight to the station in March, but the company is still recovering from an April test failure and it's not known when its first crewed mission might get off the ground.A view of Earth from Russia's Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft after it reached orbit with a film crew on a mission to the International Space Station on Oct. "It's really important we have this additional capability."īoeing hopes to launch its Starliner capsule on an unpiloted test flight in the October timeframe, followed by a test flight with three crew members aboard before the end of the year. "It really is creating the second docking port for not only commercial crew vehicles, but one of our cargo vehicles will be docking there in the not too distant future," said Kirk Shireman, space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center. IDA-3, the subject of Wednesday's spacewalk, is a replacement for the one that was lost in 2015. IDA-2 was successfully launched later and installed on Harmony's forward port. NASA launched the first IDA aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship in June 2015, but its Falcon 9 rocket suffered a catastrophic failure on the way to orbit, destroying the Dragon and its payload.
The cargo ships are pulled in for berthing by the station's robot arm and those ports do not require the capture mechanisms in an IDA. Two Earth-facing ports, one on Harmony and the other on the central Unity module, are used to berth visiting cargo ships built by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman and JAXA, the Japanese space agency. commercial crew ships and second-generation cargo ships.
IDA-3, attached to the Harmony module's upper port, will provide a second port for U.S. Space shuttles once docked at the station where IDA-2 is now installed. Space shuttles docked at the front end of the Harmony module, and that port already has been equipped with a Boeing-built international docking adapter that can accommodate either SpaceX's Crew Dragon ferry ship or Boeing's CST-100 Starliner. The Russian segment also features four ports that are used by unpiloted Progress cargo craft and Soyuz crew ferry ships. segment of the space station features four ports where visiting vehicles can either dock on their own or be berthed by the lab's robot arm. Total space station EVA time now stands at 1,367 hours and 26 minutes, or 57 days. It was the fifth station outing so far this year, the third for Hague and the first for Morgan. Hague and Morgan finished their tasks on time and returned to the airlock, ending the 6-hour 32-minute spacewalk at 1:59 p.m.
Working with electrical cables that were routed three years ago during two earlier spacewalks, Hague and Morgan connected the IDA to station power, allowing astronaut Christina Koch, working inside Harmony, to send commands driving internal hooks to close. Astronaut Nick Hague, top center, and crewmate Drew Morgan, center right, connect power and data cables to a new docking mechanism - the white structure just below Morgan - that provides a second port for use by visiting commercial crew ships being built by SpaceX and Boeing. The lab's robot arm pulled the docking mechanism out of the Dragon's trunk section earlier this week and positioned it directly atop a tunnel-like pressurized mating adaptor extending from Harmony's upper port. The new international docking adapter, or IDA, was launched to the station last month aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. EDT to officially begin the 218th space station assembly and maintenance excursion since construction began in 1998. They also routed and connected cables to expand the lab's external wireless network and provide backup power to the station's robot arm.įloating in the station's Quest airlock, astronauts Nick Hague and Drew Morgan switched their suits to battery power at 08:27 a.m. Two NASA astronauts floated outside the International Space Station early Wednesday and helped attach a second docking port for commercial crew ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX.
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