On the International Space Station, Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson of NASA floated outside the Quest airlock for a spacewalk to complete half of the work involved to swap out nickel-hydrogen batteries on the station™s truss with new lithium-ion batteries. Kimbrough and Whitson installed adapter plates on the truss and hooked up electrical cables as part of a complex robotics and spacewalk plan to shore up the station™s power supply for the future. It was the third spacewalk of Kimbrough™s career and the seventh for Whitson, who equaled the mark for most spacewalks by a woman previously set by NASA™s Suni Williams. Kimbrough will venture outside the station again on Jan. 13 with Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) to continue and complete the battery work.
