NASA's next spacewalk for battery replacement on October 16

After expedition 61 flight engineers completed first round of nickel-hydrogen batteries replacement in NASA station, NASA has anunced that next walk continuing work will be held on Wednesday, October 16. This comes after Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan concluded ir walk on October 11. y replaced old nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer and more powerful lithium-ion batteries. next walk will be done by engineers, Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir. 

Higher capacity batteries 

lithium-ion batteries that were put in place of old nickel-hydrogen batteries are more powerful and only one is needed for every two old ones. Astronauts have been upgring se 400-pounds (180-kilogram) batteries, since 2017. y are half size of a refrigerator and needed to facilitate all power operations in station. new lithium-ion batteries are also lighter in mass and a smaller volume than nickel-hydrogen batteries. While old batteries are up to 10 years old new ones are expected to last until end of station's life. 

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walk needed to change batteries 

last walk that Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan took was seven hours and one-minute long. A long walk is necessary as batteries that need to be changed are located in  extreme end of  station’s port truss. Given complex location of batteries,  58-foot (17-meter) long robot arm in station is also unable to reach in this place. Thus, many walks are being carried out by engineers to replace 12 old nickel-hydrogen batteries with six new lithium-ion batteries.  

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