Overview
- The two astronauts conducted a six-hour, 23-minute spacewalk on Tuesday, August 18, to remove a failed Space-to-Ground antenna from the station’s Z1 truss but did not install the spare unit.
- Work ran long while crews struggled to disconnect tight power and data connectors and to stow gimbal locking pins, so mission control directed the astronauts to secure the old antenna instead of completing the swap.
- Station communications were not interrupted because a second, working SGANT maintained high-data-rate links to NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network and Mission Control in Houston.
- The outing marked ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot’s first EVA and made her the first French woman to spacewalk, with Anil Menon serving as EV1 and Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway operating Canadarm2 from inside.
- Mission managers are weighing whether to finish the installation on the next scheduled EVA on August 25 or to delay it further, highlighting the tight margins and recurring maintenance demands of the ageing ISS.