Two astronauts from NASA completed a spacewalk mission lasting 6.5 hours on Thursday to replace a faulty antenna on the International Space Station, amidst what NASA described as increasing risks from orbital debris left behind by a Russian missile test weeks ago. Astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron exited the pressure chamber in the research laboratory, orbiting 400 kilometers above the Earth's surface, to begin their work at 11:15 GMT, an hour ahead of schedule.
This mission followed a 48-hour delay due to a warning about orbital debris, which was later determined to be non-threatening. It is believed to be the first such delay in over two decades in the history of the space station. This was Marshburn's fifth spacewalk at age 61 as a physician, while it was Barron's first spacewalk at age 34, serving as an officer on a U.S. Navy submarine and a nuclear engineer.
During the spacewalk, the astronauts removed a two-decade-old communications antenna and replaced it with a backup stored outside the space station. The astronauts are part of a team of four who arrived at the space station on November 11 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to join two Russian astronauts and another NASA astronaut on the station.
Four days later, NASA reported that Russia conducted a missile test against satellites without warning, generating a field of debris in low Earth orbit, which forced the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station to take refuge in their docked spacecraft to avoid potential danger. Dana Weigel, Deputy Director of NASA's International Space Station program, stated that the debris cloud from the satellite explosion later dissipated.
