Expeditions 50 astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson complete first spacewalks of 2017!

Photo Credit: Thomas Pesquet/@Thom_astro/Twitter

New Delhi: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson have completed the first spacewalk of 2017 outside International Space Station (ISS).

According to NASA, during the six-hour and 32-minute spacewalk, the two NASA astronauts successfully installed three new adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of the six new lithium-ion batteries on the International Space Station. They also accomplished several get-ahead tasks, including a photo survey of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

The new lithium-ion batteries and adapter plates replace the nickel-hydrogen batteries currently used on the station to store electrical energy generated by the station’s solar arrays. Robotic work to update the batteries began in January. This was the first of two spacewalks planned to finalize the installation, says the US space agency.

The two spacewalkers was assisted by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy from inside the space station.

The second spacewalk wil conduct by Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) on Friday, January 13.