One week after becoming the first French woman to walk in space, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot went back outside the International Space Station to finish a repair job she and NASA astronaut Anil Menon could not complete on their first attempt.
Adenot and Menon spent about 6 and a half hours outside the station Tuesday replacing a failed Space-to-Ground antenna.
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The equipment carries high-speed data between the orbiting laboratory and NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston.
The astronauts began the repair during an Aug. 18 spacewalk. They removed the failed antenna, but hardware problems slowed the work enough that they ran out of time before installing the replacement.
On Tuesday, they returned to the work site with a spare, mounting the new antenna and connecting it to the station’s power and data systems before moving the failed unit to a storage platform.
A second antenna had continued handling voice and critical data while the other was out of service. Completing the repair restored a backup to the communications system.
Initial checks showed the replacement antenna was receiving power and transmitting data.
Mission Control celebrated the successful installation with a musical joke.
“You just saved the video dish,” astronaut Anne McClain sang from Houston, a play on The Buggles’ 1979 hit “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The joke referenced the dish-shaped communications antenna the astronauts had just repaired.
The mission was logged as U.S. spacewalk 98 and marked the 283rd spacewalk performed in support of the International Space Station.
Tuesday’s outing was Menon’s third spacewalk and Adenot’s second. Adenot made history during her first spacewalk Aug. 18, becoming the first woman from France to work outside a spacecraft. She is also the fifth French astronaut to conduct a spacewalk.
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