IDA 3 Spacewalk Animation

Expedition 60 Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan of NASA will begin their planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk from inside the Quest airlock about 8:20 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 21. Live NASA Television coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. The duo will assist in the installation of International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) to Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 on the space-facing side of the station’s Harmony module.

IDA-3 will provide a second docking port to the International Space Station to accommodate the future arrivals of Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon commercial crew spacecraft. The docking port was launched to the station last month on a SpaceX Dragon on the company’s 18th commercial cargo resupply services mission to the station. IDA-2 was installed to the forward end of the Harmony module in the summer of 2016.

NASA’s commercial crew partnership with Boeing and SpaceX will restore launches of American astronauts from American soil on American rockets and maximize the time U.S. crews can dedicate to scientific research and technological advances aboard the orbiting laboratory to enable the agency’s ambitious goals for the Artemis lunar exploration program and future missions to the Moon and Mars.