On Tuesday, thousands and thousands of people watched Raja Charni, an Indian-American astronaut conduct his first spacewalk along with flight engineer Kayla Barren.
Who is Raja Charni?
Raja Chari is an Indian-American astronaut. He is a native of IO and a 1999 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in both Astronautical Engineering and Engineering Science.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology awarded him a master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics before he went on to complete the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School.
Currently, he is acting as captain of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the ISS, and he was launched to the orbiting outpost a year later. He also served as a colonelin the United States Air Force.
Chari was chosen as an astronaut in 2017. Throughout his career, Chari has managed to log over 2,500 hours of flight time against his name. Chari is also a member of the Artemis Team and may be assigned to a future lunar mission.
The mission for this spacewalk for the duo is to upgrade the ISS (International Space Station) whose services are extended till 2030.
Raja Charni along with his associate, Kayla Barren will be in a vacuum for a total of 6.5 hours while prepping the ISS (International Space Station) for solar panels. While this will be the very first walk of Raja Charni, it is second for Kayla Barren.
Spacewalk at the Space Station with NASA Astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari
In the above video of the two astronauts, Kayla barren can be seen wearing a spacesuit with red stripes on it as she acted as extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1) whereas, Charni is seen wearing a spacesuit with no strips as he acted as an extravehicular crewmember 2 (EV2).
According to the NASA officials, the pair will leave the quest which is the primary airlock for ISS, and shift over to the starboard-4 truss structure where they will assemble and install brackets and struts kits for the 3rd roll-out solar array.
2 out of 6 of the ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or iROSAs, have been installed at the space station, the remaining four are on their way. Both Chari and Barron had been preparing for the spacewalk for more than a week.
They had both put on their spacesuits and put their spacewalk tools in Quest. Finally, Nasa gave the go-ahead after they looked over all the procedures and talked to specialists on the ground.
Two of the astronauts namely, Thomas Marshburn and Matthias Maurer, will be monitor and guide Kayla and raja during exterior maintenance tasks and also help the spacewalkers in and out of their suits.
Nasa has planned to put up these six ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSA) that will use the Sun’s energy to power the many research and science projects that take place every day.
The new panels will give the space station a much-needed boost in electricity, as the number of experiments and space tourists grows. When the station gets new solar panels, it will be able to get more power than before. It will go from 160 to at least 215 kilowatts of power.
