Two NASA astronauts will venture out of the ISS for a spacewalk next week—how to watch it live

NASA has announced the names of the Expedition 74 crew members who will perform the upcoming Spacewalk 95 outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, June 30. Flight engineers Jessica Meir and Chris Williams will step outside the confines of the orbital outpost to replace a wrist joint of the Canadarm2 robotic arm over a period of six hours and 40 minutes, as per the plan laid out so far.

The 25-year-old robotic arm malfunctioned during routine operations on May 27 because of an elevated motor current in a wrist joint. As a result, the arm was put in a safe configuration, and all standard operations involving it were paused. Since the arm was always meant to be serviced in space, a replacement wrist joint is already available at the ISS.

How to watch the spacewalk

Live coverage of the spacewalk from the space station will begin at 7 am EDT on June 30. Those interested can watch the astronauts don their suits and begin their extravehicular activity (EVA) at 7:35 a.m. EDT via live streams on NASA+, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and the agency’s YouTube channel, as well as its social media handles. More details about Spacewalk 95 will emerge as experts from NASA and CSA address the media on Thursday, June 25, at 2 pm EDT.

Preparations for Spacewalk 95

Meir and Williams previously worked together on Spacewalk 94, which took place in March. The upcoming spacewalk will be Williams' second and Meir's fifth. Williams has been designated as crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes, while Meir, who will serve as crew member 2, will wear an unmarked suit.

As far as preparations are concerned, Williams spent a part of Tuesday testing his spacesuit by powering it up and checking it for comfort and mobility. He was joined by the European Space Agency's French astronaut Sophie Adenot inside the Quest airlock to confirm if the EVA suits' communication and life support systems were working, with teams from the ground overseeing these activities. The Spacewalk 95 participants also went over a 3D animation sequence that outlined their tasks and then serviced their respective emergency jet packs. The pistol grip tools that both astronauts will be using also had batteries installed by Meir. Besides the spacewalking duo, SpaceX Crew-12 pilot Jack Hathaway and Adenot will also be fulfilling key roles during the EVA. They will operate Canadarm2 and adjust its position carefully during the EVA while also monitoring the progress of the work that will see the arm restored to full motion. 

The success of this EVA is vital for NASA as Canadarm2 remains a critical component of the space station even after 25 years of work that included assembly of the station. Besides serving as a platform for spacewalkers to be secured to, it can also perform maintenance tasks like battery changes using its Dextre robotic hand and is used to capture visiting vehicles bringing supplies for the station inhabitants. Overall, this will be the 280th spacewalk to occur in service of building, maintaining, and upgrading the orbital laboratory and its components, following on from last month's spacewalk conducted by the Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Mikaev and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

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