NEW YORK, May 12. /TASS/. NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer have begun their spacewalk at the International Space Station to do works on the world’s sole orbiter.
As NASA spokesman Dan Hout told TASS, the astronauts will perform a 200th spacewalk in the entire history of the International Space Station, which will last about six hours and a half.
As NASA said on its website, Whitson and Fischer "will venture outside the Quest airlock to replace a large avionics box that supplies electricity and data connections to the science experiments, and replacement hardware stored outside the station."
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet representing the European Space Agency will assist the spacewalkers from inside the station.
Whitson and Fischer will also "install a connector that will route data to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and help the crew determine the most efficient way to conduct future maintenance on cosmic ray detector," NASA said.
According to NASA, during their planned 6.5-hour spacewalk, the astronauts will also install a protective shield on the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3, which was moved from the Tranquility to the Harmony module in March. The adapter will host a new international docking port for the arrival of commercial crew spacecraft.
This will be the ninth spacewalk for 57-year-old Whitson who is a record holder among US astronauts for the longest period of stay in outer space while 43-year-old Fischer will venture his first spacewalk.