ISS crew working fast to reconfigure docking, electrical systems

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Barry Wilmore donned spacesuits and stepped outside the International Space Station on Wednesday morning to repair a broken component in one of the eight solar power channels that provide the station's NASA-built grid with electricity.

It was Wiseman's second spacewalk -- or what those in the business call extra-vehicular activity (EVA) -- and it was Wilmore's first. Their maintenance and repair duties were set to keep the two astronauts out of station for nearly 6 1/2 hours.

In addition to repairing the solar panel component, the two astronauts will begin prepping for the rearrangement of the station's docking systems -- a reorganization that will require some of the station's power circuits to be rewired.

"We're going to be doing the things we need to do on these EVAs to prep for moving some modules around," Kenny Todd, manager of space station integration operations back on Earth, said in a press conference preceding the mission. "All that is in preparation for being able to support future [commercial] crewed vehicles coming to station.

"We're trying to get out in front of that. We'll be prepping for moving modules; we'll be installing a new docking adapter system," Todd said. "All of that will be happening throughout the next several months onboard the station."

Wednesday's spacewalk is the 183rd time astronauts have stepped outside to work on the space station since it launched in 1998. The next crew of ISS astronauts will be making several extra spacewalks in the new year.

These trips will continue the work of Wiseman and Wilmore in readying ISS for future dockings by commercial spacecraft from Boeing and SpaceX. Those spacecraft will be used to ferry NASA's astronauts to and from the space station as soon as 2017.