NASA reschedules first all-female spacewalk after battery failure

NASA has debuted a new press release that details that some changes are coming to the spacewalk schedule that is going to happen aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

At 4:30pm today, NASA will be hosting a media conference that will be streamed on their website. Throughout this conference, Kenny Todd, manager of International Space Station Operations Integration, and Megan McArthur, deputy chief of NASA's Astronaut Office will be taking live questions about the recent changes that have been put in place regarding the spacewalk scheduling. For those out of the loop, NASA and the astronauts aboard the ISS are upgrading the space station's power system through replacing old batteries with new ones, more on that here.

The space station managers have decided to postpone three spacewalks that were previously planned to be executed this week and next week. Here's why, according to the press release "Space station managers have postponed three spacewalks previously scheduled for this and next week to install new batteries in order to first replace a faulty battery charge/discharge unit (BCDU)". The press release continues and says "The BCDU failed to activate following the Oct. 11 installation of new lithium-ion batteries on the space station's truss. The three spacewalks previously planned to continue the installation of additional lithium-ion batteries will be rescheduled."

It should be noted that the failure of the BCDU has not endangered the astronauts onboard the ISS or any of the operations in the ISS, e.g experiments or supplies. Even despite the failure, the floating labs overall power supply still remains efficient enough for all operations to continue as per usual (thank god).

NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will together venture outside the space station at precisely 7:50 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 17 or Friday, Oct. 18.