Spacewalking with Dextre
Wednesday, March 29, 2017: French astronaut Thomas Pesquet performs routine maintenance outside the International Space Station during his second spacewalk on Friday (March 24). In this photo, Pesquet uses an extended foot restraint to reach the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, also known as Dextre, the robotic "hand" at the end of Canadarm2. What looks like a selfie stick in his hand is the ballscrew lubrication tool, which Pesquet used to inject grease into a mechanism called the latching end effector. — Hanneke Weitering
Sunrise in Space
Thursday, March 30, 2017: Good morning from the International Space Station! NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough tweeted this photo of the sunrise from orbit yesterday morning. Because the space station circles the Earth every 92 minutes, the crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets every day. — Hanneke Weitering
Canadarm2 Gets to Work
Friday, March 31, 2017: The International Space Station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, relocated a docking port on Sunday (March 26) to help prepare the space station for the arrival of future commercial crew spacecraft. To the left of Canadarm2 is the dome-shaped Cupola observatory and the largest window in space, where the crew can observe and control the robotic arm. But for this task, ground crews at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston operated Canadarm2 remotely. — Hanneke Weitering
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