SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule looked ‘pretty awesome’ in spacewalk, astronaut says
NASA astronauts got a “pretty awesome” view of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle docked with the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Friday (June 26). Astronauts Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken got the view of a lifetime when they stepped outside the space station to replace the outpost’s old solar array batteries. The star of that view was Endeavour, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that delivered Behnken and his fellow NASA astronaut Doug Hurley to the station May 30 on their Demo-2 mission.
Cassidy snapped a photo of the sight, with Endeavour clearly straight ahead and JAXA’s HTV-9 cargo vehicle also visible. In the photo, pictured just below the craft, you can see the stunning, blue curvature of the Earth. During a media conference from onboard the space station on June 29, they were asked about the most memorable moments from this spacewalk. Behnken noted this view as one of those moments. “Chris and I had a great event last Friday and a wonderful view of Dragon,” Behnken said. “It was just awesome to be able to look back and snap a picture and I think we got a good daylight shot that kind of showed HTV and Dragon all out there on the front of space station. It was pretty awesome.”
The pair stepped out for this spacewalk to swap out aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for new, more efficient, smaller lithium-ion batteries as part of a series of battery swap spacewalks. Behnken and Cassidy will venture out on another battery swap spacewalk Wednesday (July 1).