Two astronauts complete another 6.5-hour spacewalk this year to swap batteries

File photo: NASA astronauts (from left) Christina Koch and Nick Hague (Photo courtesy of miragenews.com)

Two flight engineers of the United States space agency NASA completed the second spacewalk of this year out of the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday to upgrade the space lab's power capability.

Nick Hague and Christina Koch wrapped up their spacewalk at 2:27 p.m. American Eastern Time, lasting about six hours and 45 minutes, according to NASA.

Hague and Anne McClain carried out this year's first spacewalk on March 22. McClain was previously scheduled to do today's task with Koch, making it the first all-female spacewalk in the history, but NASA canceled it for spacesuit's size problem.

Hague and Koch continued to install adapter plates and complete electrical connections for three of six new lithium-ion batteries for the station's port truss, according to NASA.

The batteries store power generated by the station's solar arrays to provide power to the microgravity laboratory when the station is not in sunlight as it circles Earth during orbital night.

Also, two astronauts did work to enable robotic specialists to remove one of the three new lithium ion batteries connected during the March 22 spacewalk that is not charging properly and replace it with the two older nickel hydrogen batteries. The swap will restore a full power supply to that solar array power channel, according to NASA.

Hague also inspected the worksite interfaces for a portable foot restraint a spacewalker uses to anchor themselves during the battery upgrade work and Koch installed fabric handrails to help future spacewalkers move across the worksite.

McClain and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency are scheduled to conduct another spacewalk on April 8 to establish a redundant path of power to the Canadian-built robotic arm.