Houston: Indian-origin astronaut Anil Menon will venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) on August 18 to replace a high-speed data and communications antenna.
This will be the second spacewalk for Menon in less than two weeks. His first-ever spacewalk took place on August 6, when he spent 6 hours 27 minutes outside the ISS preparing its 3B power channel for a future roll-out solar array.
Menon was born to Shankaran Menon, an immigrant to the US from Kerala, and Elizabeth Samoylenko of Ukrainian origin on October 15, 1976.
He is a colonel in the United States Space Force, emergency medicine physician and NASA astronaut.
Menon is also the great grandson of Chettur Sankaran Nair, an eminent lawyer, who was the president of the Indian National Congress for a brief period in 1897. He quit his position in the Viceroy’s Council after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919.
Nair accused the then lieutenant governor of Punjab Sir Michael O’Dwyer of terrorism, holding him responsible for the massacre. This led to a libel suit against him. He lost the suit and was ordered to pay £500 as damages and £7,000 as legal costs.
O’Dwyer offered to forego this in return for an apology, but Nair refused and paid.
The operation comes shortly after Menon’s first-ever spacewalk on August 6, when he and Meir spent
Menon will be accompanied in this spacewalk by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot. This will be the first spacewalk for her. The entire procedure is likely to take six hours and 30 minutes.
A spacewalk, formally called an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), is when an astronaut leaves a spacecraft to work in the vacuum of space. Astronauts wear specially designed spacesuits that provide oxygen, pressure, cooling and protection from the harsh environment during such missions.
They remain connected to the station with safety tethers and use handrails to move around.
NASA is planning to begin live coverage of the spacewalk at 4.30 pm IST, with the spacewalk scheduled to start at about 6.05 pm IST, as reported by India Today.
During the mission, the pair will remove a failed space-to-ground antenna, store it on an external platform and install a spare on the station’s Z1 truss. The antenna is an important communications link, allowing the ISS to exchange data and high-speed communications with Mission Control in Houston.