At 9:20 p.m. EST, STS-130 spacewalkers Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick switched their suits to battery power, officially starting today’s excursion outside the orbiting laboratory. Behnken is wearing a spacesuit marked with solid red stripes. Patrick is wearing an all-white suit. This will be Behken’s fifth and Patrick’s second spacewalk.
Behnken and Patrick will spend their first four hours connecting the ammonia loops on the new Tranquility node to those of the Destiny laboratory. There are two loops, with two lines apiece, each of which must be connected to both Tranquility and Destiny and routed through a bracket on Unity, which connects Tranquility to Destiny. Behnken will open one of the loops so that ammonia will be allowed to flow to the node from the station’s external thermal control system.
Today’s spacewalk is expected to last about 6.5-hours.