Nasa ‘cable guy’ astronauts take third ISS spacewalk this week

Two Nasa astronauts have ventured out of the International Space Station in their third spacewalk in just over a week. Terry Virts and Butch Wilmore went into space with 400ft of cable and two antennas to install. Once that is complete, the spacewalkers will have routed nearly 800ft of power and data lines needed for future US crew capsules.

These cables are going to attach to some antennas that are going to be used for the future American vehicles that are going to be docking, bringing crew to the space station starting in a few years.

Terry Virts

Nasa is paying Boeing and SpaceX nearly 7 billion US dollars (£4.5 billion) to develop spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the space station. The first manned flight is targeted for 2017 and new docking ports will be flown up later this year. Mr Virts and Mr Wilmore’s first spacewalk was on February 21 and the second on Wednesday. Nasa has not conducted such quick spacewalks since its former shuttle days.

Science NASA spacewalk