Bowen & Alneyadi on Spacewalk | International Space Station

Bowen & Alneyadi on Spacewalk | International Space Station

Spacewalkers Stephen Bowen and Sultan Alneyadi

Spacewalkers Stephen Bowen and Sultan Alneyadi exit the Quest airlock

NASA astronaut Steve Bowen and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi concluded their spacewalk at 4:12 p.m. EDT after 7 hours and 1 minute on Friday, April 28, 2023. This was the first spacewalk for a United Arab Emirates astronaut. Bowen and Alneyadi laid cables and installed insulation on mounting brackets on the starboard truss of the station for the installation of the next pair of International Space Station Roll Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs). The astronauts were unable to free up an electronics box located on the truss associated with a degraded S-band communications antenna. The antenna removal was deferred to a future spacewalk ahead of its planned return to Earth.

The installation is part of a series of spacewalks to augment the International Space Station’s power channels with new International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs). Four iROSAs have been installed so far, and two more will be mounted to the platforms installed during this spacewalk in the future.

It was the 261st spacewalk in support of space station assembly, upgrades, and maintenance, the eighth spacewalk for Bowen, and the first for any UAE astronaut.

Bowen and Alneyadi are in the midst of a planned six-month science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.

Follow Expedition 69 updates here:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 69 Crew (April 2023)

Station Commander: Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)

Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin & Andrey Fedyaev

Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

NASA: Flight Engineers Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center

Image Date: April 28, 2023

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