NASA, ESA Astronauts to Finish ISS Antenna Swap in Spacewalk Today

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (ESA) are conducting a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) today, Aug. 25, to install a replacement space-to-ground antenna. The extravehicular activity (EVA) — work astronauts perform outside their spacecraft or station — is scheduled to begin around 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT) and last 6.5 hours, with NASA's live coverage starting at 7:00 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

Today's task completes work from an Aug. 18 spacewalk — Adenot's first-ever EVA, making her the first French woman to conduct a spacewalk. That day, she and Menon removed a failed space-to-ground antenna, a relay link that enables high-speed communications between the ISS and Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, but ran out of time before installing the replacement.

If time permits, Menon and Adenot will also attempt a "get-ahead" task: replacing a retroreflector, a device that reflects incoming signals straight back to their source, on the forward port of the station's Harmony module. NASA said the swap will improve navigation data for visiting spacecraft. Today's outing is the third spacewalk for Menon and the second for Adenot, with Menon designated "crewmember 1" and Adenot "crewmember 2." It marks the 283rd spacewalk in ISS history; the station has been continuously occupied by rotating crews since November 2000.

Adenot arrived at the ISS in February as part of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, alongside NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Menon reached the station on July 14 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. Menon carried out his first spacewalk on Aug. 6, with Meir, to install solar array mounting hardware.