Spacewalk on Saturday for Bartolomeo and more

Victor Glover during January spacewalk. Credis: NASA

NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins will partner up for their third spacewalk together on Saturday 13 March to work on the station’s cooling system and communications gear and complete cable conntections on the Bartolomeo external commercial facility. The duo will begin their excursion when they set their spacesuits to battery power around 13:30 CET (12:30 GMT). NASA television starts its broadcast of all the spacewalk activities at 12:00 CET (11:00 GMT)

They will spend the first part of their six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk venting and relocating ammonia lines on the far-left side of the Space Station at the Port-6 truss structure. Victor will replace a wireless communications antenna on the Unity module. Mike will complete cable connections on the Bartolomeo external payload facility located on Europe’s Columbus laboratory module.

Bartolomeo, named after the younger brother of Christopher Columbus, was installed by robotic arm on the forward-facing side of the space laboratory on 2 April 2020. Bartolomeo is built and operated by Airbus, and hosted by ESA on the International Space Station. The facility has a clear view of Earth and the service benefits from high-speed data transfer to provide easy access to space at competitive prices. Previous spacewalks prepared Columbus to receive the new host facility by adapting support pins to which Bartolomeo will connect.

Mike and Victor spent 27 January 2021 outside the Space Station on another spacewalk when they were tasked with connecting power and data cables for Bartolomeo. The spacewalkers weren’t able to connect all the required power cables between the platform and Columbus on that sortie and two out of four were connected with a partially tightened lever, secured by a tie wrap. These drew power as expected. Due to time constraints, the other two connectors were temporarily capped and safely secured allowing teams to determine the next steps for Bartolomeo’s connection and operation. On Saturday Mike will connect the remaining cables.

Following that, the spacewalkers will meet back up to install a “stiffener” on the Quest’s airlock cover. Finally, they will route high-definition video camera cables before wrapping up the fifth spacewalk of 2021.

Just as on the 27 January spacewalk to upgrade Columbus, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be at ground control in Houston, USA, to talk Victor and Mike through the intricate spacewalk.

Spacewalk timeline

All times listed in GMT and subject to change based on real-time events

Watch live below via NASA television: