NASA shared a video of an astronaut throwing debris into space on its Instagram page today and channeled the motto of Netflix cleaning sensation Marie Kondo.
Luca Parmitano threw a debris shield into space after removing it to fix the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station last week.
‘Did this debris shield spark joy? Sometimes you need to let go of what no longer serves you,’ the American space agency shared in the post.
The Italian astronaut Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Morgan of NASA, who commands the ISS’ current Expedition 61, performed the first AMS servicing spacewalk on November 15.
‘We’re going to perform what could be considered open-heart surgery on this amazing experiment,’ Parmitano said before the 15h extravehicular activity (EVA).
‘It’s a combination of things that makes this EVA so challenging. You have certainly an access problem … AMS is in a remote area without handles or locations to hold onto, because it was not made to be repaired [on] EVA.”
According to NASA these spacewalks the most difficult since the Hubble Space Telescope repairs a few decades ago.
Today the team started another six-hour and 30-minute spacewalk – making it the tenth one this year.
The AMS, which weighs 7.5 tons, is located on the side of the orbiting laboratory and has been hunting for dark matter since 2011, Space.com noted.
There’s a third spacewalk, booked for Dec. 2, will involve attaching the new pump module and modifying new coolant lines.
This $2 billion spectrometer is searching for elusive antimatter and dark matter.
It’s already studied more than 148 billion charged cosmic rays.
It is 16 feet by 13 feet by ten feet, with a mass of seven tons – and was meant to operate for three years.
By installing four new and improved coolant pumps, the astronauts can keep it working throughout the life of the space station or another five to 10 years.
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