NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara exited from the Quest airlock on the International Space Station (ISS), at 1205 GMT on 1 November, to begin US EVA-89 in the fourth all-female spacewalk on the station. Their objectives were to remove an H fixture from the 3B mass canister on the P4 truss, in preparation for the arrival of the struts and the iROSA solar arrays in 2025, and to replace one of the 12 trundle bearing assemblies on the port solar alpha rotary joint. This would allow the solar arrays to track the Sun and generate electricity to power the station. They also expected to retrieve the SASA antenna from ESP2 to return it to Earth however this task was moved to the next EVA owing to issues removing the covers.
With the H fixture removed and the bearing replacement completed, Mission Control confirmed that the solar array was functioning well. The astronauts also fixed a cable that had been interfering with an external camera (camera 8) used for docking, and they removed a handling bar fixture in preparation for the future installation of a roll-out solar array.
Moghbeli and O’Hara then turned their attention to the removal of the Radio Frequency Group (RFG) which is a communications electronics box. After lifting some multilayer insulation to assess the work involved, the astronauts decided to defer this task to a future EVA.
Jasmin Moghbeli works on the RFG as the ISS passes over the Pacific Ocean. Courtesy: NASA
During the EVA a tool bag which contained the grease gun was lost. Flight controllers spotted the bag from the external station camaras. The tools were not required for the rest of the spacewalk and posed no collision risk to the ISS.
The astronauts re-entered the Quest airlock at 1843 GMT and spacewalk concluded at 1847 GMT, after 6 hours and 42 minutes.
This was the first spacewalk for both Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara.
