NASA astronaut Kayla Barron is pictured during spacewalk training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz
NASA Astronaut Kayla Barron During Spacewalk Training
NASA astronaut Kayla Barron is pictured during spacewalk training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

 On Monday morning, mission management granted the official go-ahead for the spacewalk, which will take place on Tuesday. There will be an in-depth discussion of the upcoming spacewalks on NASA TV today at 2 pm EDT with International Space Station officials.

This week's six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk by NASA Flight Engineers Kayla Barron and Raja Chari will occur in the U.S. Quest airlock, geared up to accommodate the two astronauts. Exiting Quest, the astronauts will go over to the Starboard-4 truss structure, where they'll install modification kits that will allow the space station to prepare for its third solar array to be deployed. Tuesday, NASA TV will begin its live coverage of the spacewalk at 6:30 am. ET.

On Monday, Barron and Chari began preparing their spacesuits and setting up their spacewalk gear aboard Quest in preparation for their spacewalk. After that, they were joined by NASA's Tom Marshburn and the European Space Agency's Matthias Maurer for the last review of protocols and a meeting with experts on the ground. They will assist the spacewalkers as they go into and out of their suits, and they will also monitor and coach them while they carry out the external repairs.

On Monday, Mark Vande Hei, a NASA Flight Engineer, fitted up a tiny satellite deployer inside the Kibo laboratory module for another future external assignment. When the Japanese robotic arm picks up the deployer and places it in space's vacuum, it will be steered away from the station by the deployer he put inside Kibo's airlock. Many educational and scientific research projects will soon use a fleet of CubeSats that will be launched into Earth's orbit shortly.

Astronauts Commander Anton Shkaplerov and Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov, aboard the Russian section of the International Space Station, continued their research into an antigravity suit that might alleviate the consequences of living in space. One lower body negative pressure suit can pull fluids that pool near a crew member's head down to the lower body, increasing veins and tissues. As a result, a person's return to Earth's gravity may be easier and space-related headaches and eye problems avoided.