Spacewalking or Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut or cosmonaut outside a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s appreciable atmosphere (a moonwalk is also an EVA). The first skywalker was the Soviet cosmonaut Alexey Arkhipovich Leonov. He became the first human to conduct an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on March 18, 1965; exiting the capsule during the Voskhod 2 mission for a 12-minute spacewalk. Since this very short EVA, a lot of astronauts/cosmonauts spent many hours outside their spacecraft, mostly for maintenance missions. Here are the top 20 longest spacewalks in history.
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Category Archives: Space Exploration
Can you find the spacewalker’s legs in this photo?
During the Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Expedition 54 Commander Aleksandr Misurkin’s spacewalk on February 2, 2018, NASA astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei published a photo on his twitter account and asked his followers that “Can you find the space-walker’s legs in this photo?” Vande Hei added “Russian spacewalk continues!”
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Watch: Astronaut Shares Photos of Places He’d Visited on Earth Alongside Photos of the Same Locations he Snapped from Space
NASA astronaut Randy “Komrade” Bresnik, the commander of the Expedition 53 (the 53rd expedition to the International Space Station) has published a beautiful video on his twitter account titled “Through the eyes of a spaceman: One World Many Views”. In the video, Bresnik shared photos of places he’d visited on Earth alongside photos of the same locations he snapped from space. He also wrote: “You don’t have to be in outer space to experience the beauty of our home planet. Capture the beauty of a moment, or the excitement of an instant, and share it with others.”
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Watch: Earth from the Geostationary Orbit
An amazing time-lapse video of Earth from the geostationary orbitNotes 1. The video was generated from the images taken by Japanese weather satellite Himawari 8, which takes a photo of Earth every 10 minutes. Himawari 8 is the 8th of the Himawari geostationary weather satellites operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency.
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There’s a Memorial to Fallen Astronauts on the Moon
On August 2, 1971, during the third EVA (Extravehicular activity) of Apollo 15Notes 1 mission, commander David Scott drove the rover away from Lunar Module, where the television camera could be used to observe the lunar liftoff. Then he left a small aluminum statuette called “Fallen Astronaut” next to the rover, which commemorates those astronauts and cosmonauts who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration. Scott also left a plaque bearing the names of 14 known American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts deceased by that time, along with the statuette. The names of Astronauts and cosmonauts were inscribed in alphabetical order on the plaque.
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The Earthrise as seen from the Moon by the Soviet Zond 7 spacecraft
Two beautiful historical Earthrise photos, taken by Zond 7, the unmanned Soviet moon-flyby spacecraft in 1969, almost a month after the American Moon landing (on July 20, 1969).
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Watch: 12 Years Ago, New Horizons’ fantastic voyage began with a spectacular launch
Twelve years ago, on January 19, 2006, aboard an Atlas V rocket, NASA’s New Horizons probe started its fantastic voyage of exploration with a spectacular launch from the Florida coast toward Pluto and the mysterious realm of the Kuiper Belt beyond.
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25th launch anniversary of TDRS-6 (Amazing Photos)
Today, to celebrate 25th launch anniversary of Tracking and Data Relay Satellite 6 (TDRS-6), the American communications satellite which launched by Space Shuttle Endeavour on January 13, 1993, NASA has published two amazing photos on its twitter account. The American space agency has tweeted that “Happy 25th launch anniversary to TDRS-6, launched on this day in 1993! TDRS-6 is still operational today, well past its intended design life“.
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Want faster data and a cleaner planet? Start mining asteroids
Philip Metzger is a physicist/planetary scientist who works on technologies for mining the Moon, Mars, and asteroids; for developing extraterrestrial spaceports; and for starting robotic industry in space. He took early retirement from NASA, where he co-founded the KSC Swamp Works. He is now with the planetary science faculty at the University of Central Florida.
Edited by Corey S Powell
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John W. Young, the astronaut who flew 4 different spacecraft, has died
John W. Young, the legendary astronaut has died on January 5, 2018, aged 87. During his 42 years of active NASA service, Young flew in six space missions (with seven launches, counting his lunar liftoff), becoming the first astronaut to achieve that number. He was the only person to have piloted, and been commander of, four different classes of spacecraft: Gemini, the Apollo Command/Service Module, the Apollo Lunar Module, and the Space Shuttle (he was the first astronaut to command the Space Shuttle). He was also the ninth person to walk on the Moon as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. Young was actually one of only three people to have flown to the Moon twice, others being Jim Lovell and Eugene Cernan.
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