The mission began at 12:27 GMT. Twenty minutes later, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (ESA) was once again in the vacuum of space around the ISS, accompanied by her teammate, NASA astronaut Anil Menon, mounted on the base of the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
The two astronauts had already spent more than six hours outside the ISS, just enough time to remove the faulty Space-to-Ground antenna, the one NASA engineers call SGANT.
That day, Sophie Adenot and Anil Menon had struggled with stubborn bolts and connectors, and the two astronauts had not had time to replace SGANT with a new antenna.
The aim of this second spacewalk was therefore to finish the job.
This second outing lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes. The two astronauts installed and then connected the replacement antenna. This equipment plays a key role in communications between the ISS and NASA’s control centre in Houston, particularly for the transmission of high-bandwidth data.
In all, this operation marks the 98th US spacewalk and the 283rd conducted for the assembly, maintenance or modernisation of the International Space Station.
Last February, Sophie Adenot became the second French woman to travel into space aboard the US capsule SpaceX Crew Dragon. Claudie Haigneré went before her in 1996 and then in 2001 aboard Soyuz rockets.