NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Suni Williams completed their first spacewalk of the year on Thursday to perform maintenance work on the International Space Station (ISS), including repairs to the NICER telescope.
After several hours of work supporting the assembly, maintenance and upgrades of the orbiting laboratory, the astronauts concluded their walk at 7:00 p.m. ET.
Both completed their primary objectives, which included removing and replacing a velocity gyroscope assembly and installing patches to cover damaged areas of the light filters on the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray telescope.
The astronauts also replaced a reflector device on one of the international docking adapters.
The pair, who are scheduled to perform another walk this month, also checked the access areas and docking tools that the astronauts will use for future maintenance of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
It was Hague’s fourth spacewalk, Williams’ eighth and NASA’s 273rd servicing walk.
