NASA astronauts returned to the ISS after a long spacewalk

NASA astronauts Christopher Cassidy and Robert Benken successfully completed a spacewalk to modernize the power system of the International Space Station (ISS), the NASA press service said on June 26. Access to outer space lasted about six hours. After performing the planned work, they returned to board the American segment of the ISS through the Quest gateway. On the outer surface of the station, astronauts dismantled five obsolete nickel-hydrogen solar battery batteries, and installed instead two more powerful lithium-ion batteries on the support segment of the S6. At the same time, the astronauts exceeded the work plan, having managed to remove two more old batteries, the dismantling of which was originally planned during the next spacewalk, scheduled for July 1. Recall that the new batteries were delivered on board the ISS in May 2020 by the Japanese cargo spacecraft HTV. According to the news agency, today Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Wagner, as well as US astronauts Christopher Cassidy, Douglas Hurley and Robert Benken, are on board the ISS.