iss063m261761806_Expedition_63_US_Spacewalk_Preview_Briefing_200624

Expedition 63 Spacewalk Preview Briefing: The Expedition 63 Spacewalk Briefing took place at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, June 24, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The briefing participants were; Kenneth Todd, ISS Deputy Program Manager, Steve Stich, Commercial Crew Program manager, Allison Bolinger, ISS spacewalk flight director, Sandra Moore, ISS spacewalk officer. NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken are scheduled to go outside the International Space Station (ISS) Friday, June 26, and Wednesday, July 1, for spacewalks to begin the replacement of batteries for one of the power channels on the orbiting laboratory. Cassidy, the commander of Expedition 63, and Behnken, who joined the crew May 31 after arriving aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon with NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight, will depart the Quest airlock for both spacewalks. The spacewalking astronauts will replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for one of two power channels on the far starboard truss (S6 Truss) of the station with new lithium-ion batteries that arrived to the station on a Japanese cargo ship last month. The battery replacement work is the culmination of power upgrade spacewalks that began in January 2017. Cassidy will be extravehicular crew member 1 for both spacewalks, wearing the spacesuit with red stripes, while Behnken will be extravehicular crew member 2, wearing the spacesuit with no stripes. It will be the seventh and eighth spacewalks for each astronaut. The spacewalks will be the 228th and 229th in support of space station assembly, maintenance and upgrades.