Centre swage

‘Swage’ was the phrase of the day on Monday as ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano carried out the third spacewalk to service the cosmic ray looking Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS-02. Right here Luca is suspended above Earth as he’s moved to a second worksite to swage, or be part of, the instrument’s tubes to a brand new pump system that may give it a brand new lease on life.

Using on the Worldwide Area Station’s robotic arm, Luca soared to the cosmic ray detector’s worksite for practically 5 hours of house plumbing.

Yesterday’s spacewalk was essentially the most crucial of 4 spacewalks deliberate to service the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer that has supplied scientists with invaluable information on cosmic particles lengthy after its unique three-year mission. In 2017 the choice was made to service the instrument in any case 4 cooling methods wore out.

Luca and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan started by passing the cooling system to one another as they inched their means from the airlock to the Area Station’s robotic arm. Luca then connected himself to the arm and – aided by astronaut Jessica Meir who operated this from contained in the Station – transported the system to the hard-to-reach worksite.

Luca rode the arm into place, seen on this picture, and along with Drew screwed the brand new pump onto AMS. The system was powered on and Luca was moved to a unique location by robotic arm for the swage operations. Luca did six swages earlier than taking the robotic arm journey once more to the underside of AMS for the final two the place he completed the job.

The spacewalk was a hit, with Luca and Drew ending their delicate and unprecedented work forward of schedule. They returned to the Area Station airlock ending the spacewalk at six hours and two minutes. A fourth and final spacewalk for AMS is deliberate at a later date.