Astronauts spacewalked six and a half hours to replace one of the station's antennas

Original title: Spacewalk six and a half hours Astronaut replaces an antenna on the International Space Station

Beijing, 3 Dec (Xinhua) -- Two NASA astronauts completed a 6-hour and 30-minute spacewalk on the 2nd to replace a malfunctioning antenna on the International Space Station.

At 6:15 a.m. Eastern Time (19:15 Beijing time on the 2nd), astronauts Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron left the space laboratory about 400 kilometers from Earth to replace the antenna.

On January 13, 2017, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet came out of the cabin to install a new lithium-ion battery for the solar power supply system of the Orbital Laboratory of the International Space Station. (Xinhua News Agency/Midland)

Marshburn and Barron dismantled a malfunctioning S-band radiocommunication antenna assembly and replaced it with a backup antenna. Fault antennas have been in use for more than 20 years.

Spacewalk, also known as out-of-cabin activity, is a key technology in manned spaceflight. According to Reuters, Mashburn, a 61-year-old military doctor, has been stationed on the International Space Station twice and has been out of the cabin four times; Barron, 34, a naval submarine officer and nuclear engineer, is her first out of the cabin.

Barron later told Marshburn that the spacewalk was "fantastic."

The spacewalk was scheduled for Nov. 30, but five hours before the mission began, the U.S. military detected that there might be space junk approaching. For safety reasons, NASA ordered the mission to be postponed until 48 hours later.

NASA spokesman Gary Jordan said it was the first time in more than 20 years that the International Space Station had been delayed due to space junk. NASA has not yet identified the source of that space junk. (Lin Shuting)

Source: Xinhua News Agency