Upcoming January 2025 Events: Your Guide to Space Policy Insights!

NASA astronauts are scheduled to conduct two spacewalks at the International Space Station on January 16 and January 23, 2025. Both are set to commence at 7:00 am ET and will broadcast on NASA+ starting at 5:30 am ET.

• January 16: Nick Hague and Suni Williams will undertake the initial spacewalk “to swap out a rate gyro assembly that contributes to orientation control for the station, apply patches to shield damaged sections of light filters for an X-ray telescope known as NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), and replace a reflector device utilized for navigational data on one of the international docking adapters. Furthermore, the duo will inspect access points and connector tools that will facilitate future maintenance tasks on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.” This will mark Hague’s fourth spacewalk and Williams’ eighth.
• January 23: The participants for the second spacewalk were not disclosed in NASA’s January 7 press release. NASA indicated they will follow the first spacewalk.

These represent the first NASA spacewalks since two unsuccessful attempts last summer, one due to an astronaut (Matt Dominick) experiencing “spacesuit discomfort” and the other because of a significant water leak in an umbilical linking astronaut Tracy Dyson’s spacesuit to the ISS.