Don’t look down: Spacewalking ‘cable guys’ begin work outside station

Spacewalking astronauts routed more than 300 feet of cable outside the International Space Station on Saturday, tricky and tiring advance work for the arrival of new American-made crew capsules. It was the first of three spacewalks planned for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts over the coming week. Altogether, Wilmore and Virts have 764 feet of cable to run outside the space station. They got off to a strong start Saturday, rigging eight power and data lines, or about 340 feet. The longest single stretch was 43 feet. NASA considers this the most complicated cable-routing job in the 16-year history of the space station. Equally difficult will be running cable on the inside of the complex.

Pretty cool.

Flight engineer Terry Virts, speaking as he emerged from the space station at 435 kilometres above the South Pacific

The outing is the first of several spacewalks aimed at preparing the orbiting outpost for the arrival of US commercial crew capsules, bringing astronauts to low-Earth orbit in the coming years. Initially planned for Friday, the spacewalk was postponed by a day to allow NASA more time to wrap up an investigation into the suits’ fan pump separator — which helps control the suit’s temperature. The same system failed in 2013 when water flooded the helmet of a spacewalking Italian astronaut, nearly drowning him.

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