Astronauts installed new solar panels on the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday. Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet needed a six-hour spacewalk, NASA reports.
The old solar panels begin to show signs of decay after twenty years of service. The new ones are needed to continue to supply the space station with sufficient electricity. The panels are expected to last 15 years.
Actually, the solar panels should have been installed on Wednesday, but then the team faced technical problems. On Sunday, the astronauts were not bothered by that.
The solar panels can be rolled out and are 19 meters long in total. The astronauts were chained to the space station during the mission.
The new solar panels were delivered to the space station earlier this month by a SpaceX unmanned rocket.