NASA has made a significant achievement by successfully installing a new parking spot at the International Space Station (ISS).
Commander Jeff Williams and flight engineer Kate Rubins of Expedition installed the first international Docking Adapter (IDA) on the ISS on Friday. According to reports, the event marks an important step in space exploration as the orbiting lab can now accommodate new commercial space taxis arriving at its place.
Both Williams and Rubins were greatly excited after the mission and the latter said that the view is phenomenal, as she left the space station's Quest airlock. Williams also congratulated their team, saying that they have opened up a new chapter of the story of ISS. The spacewalk was the maiden adventure of Rubins, but Williams was doing it for the fourth time in his career.
It started one minute ahead of schedule at 8:04 a.m. and ended early as well, at 2:02 p.m. Instead of taking the scheduled 6.5 hours, it took 32 minutes less. However, the procedure was not all smooth. Before it all began, the ground robotics team used the robotic arm of the space station to position the IDA in front of the Pressurized Mating Adapter-2 (PMA-2). After an hour, the arm released the IDA, which Williams and Rubins had to tether and tighten.
The task was not easy and they faced some hiccups initially. Rubins found herself stuck with a stubborn cable connector but the experienced Williams came to her rescue and moved around the side of the IDA to assist her. Eventually, the two succeeded in connecting the cables with the IDA. Later, all the hook sensors and cables were checked and when found ready for action, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, signaled a command for the hooks to close and thus, the IDA was permanently fixed to PMA-2.
It is worth mentioning here that the IDA is a piece of vital machinery and its installation means a lot because from now onwards, SpaceX and Boeing vehicles can also be accommodated in the space station, which was earlier impossible. Before the installation, only Russian vehicles could dock with the space station.
