Today NASA Television is providing coverage of the Russian Expedition 44 crew’s spacewalk being conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS) at 9:45 a.m. EDT.
The Itinerary
Footage of the six hour spacewalk is being livestreamed straight from NASA’s website, and will follow crew as they start a very thorough photographic exterior inspection of the Russian segment of the ISS. Before this inspection gets underway, the crew will be adding some new equipment to the Russian segment. The entire expedition should take just six hours to complete.
Expedition 44
Expedition 44 is the 44th — and current — expedition crew to the ISS, and is composed of one commander and five flight engineers, including NASA Astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren. This is Lindgren’s first spaceflight.
Expedition 44 began on June 11, 2015 and is expected to return on September 11, 2015.
While aboard the ISS, the crew will install new equipment, continue research on the on-going veg-01 experiment, observe microbes that may be a threat, examine liquid crystals in motion, and perform a one-year study on how space travel might affect identical twins (NASA Astronauts Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly).
NASA’s vegetable production system is an experiment that has been on-going since May 2014. Veg-01, as the experiment has been named, is a system that will allow astronauts to grow their own fresh food while they are on deep space missions. The crew of Expedition 44 will be eating samples of the second Veg-01 harvest on August 13, while the remainder will be sent back to NASA for further study.
The twins study is perhaps the second most interesting part of the mission. NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly is currently aboard the ISS while his brother, former NASA Astronaut Mark Kelly is here on Earth. The study is simply looking at changes in the human body in the fields of genetics, psychology, physiology, microbiology, and immunology while one brother is in space and the other is here on Earth.
Check Out NASA TV
NASA began its livestream coverage at 9:45 a.m. EDT, and can be found by simply visiting their site or clicking this link. You can also join the conversation via Twitter by following @Space_Station and using the hashtag #spacewalk. And be sure to visit NASA’s site for more information about the Expedition 44 crew.
The original Penny Skateboard has been put to the test on Clapway TV. According to Ben Mackay, the founder of Penny Skateboards, skateboarding can be “terrifying,” “exhilarating” and “blissful” all at the same time.
