After a delay, two astronauts are preparing to go out to space to repair an antenna at the space station

date of publication:
December 02 2021 10:16 GMT

Update date: December 02, 2021 10:25 GMT

Two NASA astronauts are set to embark on a spacewalk Thursday to repair a faulty antenna on the International Space Station, after the mission was delayed 48 hours due to an alarm from debris that later turned out to be fearless.

NASA TV plans to broadcast the six-and-a-half-hour mission live.

The mission is scheduled to begin at 1210 GMT with the exit of astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron from a hole in the orbital station at an altitude of 402 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

The mission is the fifth time that Marshburn, 61, a doctor, has walked into outer space, and the first time for Barron, 34, a US Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer on her first space flight.

The goal of the mission is to remove a radio antenna that is now more than 20 years old, and replace it with a spare stored outside the space station.

The two astronauts are among a team of 4 astronauts who arrived at the space station on November 11 aboard the SpaceX “Dragon” capsule, which was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to join two Russian astronauts and another from NASA on board the station.

Four days later, NASA said, Russia conducted an anti-satellite missile test without warning, which generated a field of debris in low Earth orbit and forced the seven astronauts aboard the International Station to take cover with their spaceships anchored at the station to allow the opportunity to move away until the danger passed.

The cloud of debris from the explosion of a satellite then dissipated, said Dana Weigel, deputy program manager for the International Station at NASA.

On the ninth of last November, 4 astronauts who were inside the “Crow Dragon” capsule of the “Space-X” company, landed safely in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.

This came at the end of a 6-month scientific mission of the US Aeronautics and Space Administration “NASA” aboard the International Space Station, which included a trip back to Earth, which lasted for a whole day.

The capsule, a Dragon type, called “Endeavour” landed by parachute in the sea as planned after (10:30 pm) EST on Monday (03:30 GMT Tuesday) after a return flight through the Earth’s atmosphere broadcast it.” NASA” live online.