CALIFORNIA: How astronauts aboard the International Space Station spent their weekend

CALIFORNIA: Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins
during a spacewalk on Saturday also replaced an antenna for helmet cameras,
rerouted ethernet cables while rearranging the space station plumbing

A pair of
NASA astronauts floated out on a spacewalk Saturday to rearrange space station
plumbing, careful to avoid toxic ammonia coolant still lingering in the lines.

The hose
work should have been completed during a spacewalk outside the International
Space Station a week ago, but was put off when power upgrades took longer than
expected.

Eager to
get the station improvements done before the astronauts head home this spring,
Mission Control ordered up the bonus spacewalk for Victor Glover and Mike
Hopkins. They teamed up for back-to-back spacewalks 1 1/2 months ago and were
happy to chalk up another.

“You guys
have fun out there and be safe,” Mission Control radioed as the spacewalk
finally got underway, almost an hour late.

Before
going out, the astronauts had to replace the communication caps beneath their
helmets in order to hear properly. “I’ve got you loud and clear,” Hopkins said
once the new cap was on his head.

Glover
and Hopkins — who launched last November on SpaceX — had to vent a pair of
ammonia jumper cables that were added years ago following a leak in the space
station’s external cooling system.

NASA
cautioned the astronauts to use “extra vigilance” to prevent ammonia from
getting on their spacesuits and tracking it back inside. The spacewalkers had
long tools to vent the hoses and were advised to stay clear of the nozzles.

Glover
and Hopkins had to move one of the hoses to a more central location near the
NASA hatch, in case it’s needed on the opposite end of the station.

Saturday’s
other odd jobs included: replacing an antenna for helmet cameras, rerouting
ethernet cables, tightening connections on a European experiment platform, and
installing a metal ring on the hatch thermal cover.

It was
the fifth spacewalk — and, barring an emergency, the last — for this
US-Russian-Japanese crew of seven.