NASA is preparing to conduct its first spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) in nearly a year, ending an unusually long break for the activity.
Truth be told, NASA had a spacewalk planned for early January but called it off after one of the two participating astronauts experienced a serious health issue that ultimately forced the early return to Earth of a SpaceX crew.
The space agency is currently targeting March 18 for a spacewalk involving NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Chris Williams.
Coincidentally, the spacewalk is scheduled for the 61st anniversary of the first-ever spacewalk. The milestone was achieved by Alexei Leonov, who exited his spacecraft for around 10 minutes during the Voskhod 2 mission in 1965. This was followed about three months later by the first-ever U.S. spacewalk, performed by NASA astronaut Ed White during the Gemini 4 mission.
Meir and Williams have been getting ready for their upcoming extravehicular activity by inspecting their spacesuits, trying them on, and checking the Quest airlock from where they will exit the space-based facility.
The pair will spend around six-and-a-half hours in the vacuum of space, installing a modification kit and route cables on the port side of the orbital outpost as part of preparations for a future roll-out solar array. The seventh roll-out solar array will be installed on a later spacewalk to augment the main solar arrays’ power generation capabilities, NASA said.
This will be the fourth spacewalk for Meir, who participated in her first one in 2019, followed by two more several months later. Meir arrived at the space station last month as part of SpaceX’s Crew-12.
Williams, on the other hand, is on his first space mission and so the upcoming spacewalk will mark his debut outside the station. The American astronaut arrived at the ISS before Meir, in November 2025, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.