INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION – Kayla Baron, a Richland native, will perform her first space walk tomorrow, Space Walk 78, at 4:10am along with flight engineer Tom Marshburn.
The two are two of seven on the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the ISS, which launched on November 10, 2021. Baron is serving as a mission specialist.
Both crew members will be working together to replace a failed S-Band antenna. The degraded S-Band antenna will be replaced with a spare unit on express logistics carrier number 3. Kayla Baron will prepare the spare unit and both are set to be out in space for 6 and a half hours. They have to replace the antenna because it has a failed returned link meaning they are not able to transmit back to earth. NASA Spacewalk flight director says he and the team are confident about the spacewalk tomorrow.
NASA discovered the failed antenna in mid-September. This gave them plenty of time to prepare. Tom and Kayla had time to go in to the neutral buoyancy laboratory (a big pool verification fit check) where they put their space suit inside the space station and floats around to make sure it fits properly.
NASA has just surpassed 21 years of humans aboard the space station.
For full details on the space walk, you can go to NASA’s live feed here. NASA will also be streaming it live at 4:10am PST, 7:10am EST.
