ISS Spacewalk Coverage, Commercial Launch Operations to Proceed After Congress Ends Shutdown

NASA is expected to proceed Tuesday with its live television coverage of a spacewalk on the International Space Station after Congress passed a three-week stopgap bill to end a government shutdown that went into effect Saturday, Spaceflight Now reported Monday.

Astronauts Scott Tingle and Mark Vande Hei are scheduled to do a spacewalk Tuesday to conduct repairs on the orbiting laboratory’s robotic arm.

“When it comes to station operations we have a plan, mission essential critical personnel will be on site, they’ll be working, we’ll be continuing the mission,” Kenny Todd,  space station integration and operations manager at NASA, said of ISS operations in the event of a shutdown.

Another spacewalk is scheduled on Jan. 29 to complete repairs on the robotic system.

The three-day shutdown also threatened to disrupt commercial launch activities at U.S. Air Force-operated sites at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Florida-based Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Those launch operations include a static fire test of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Falcon 9 rocket’s hold-down firing test at Cape Canaveral.

Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off Jan. 30 to bring into space a military communications satellite for the government of Luxembourg and SES, while Falcon Heavy’s initial launch is expected to occur in February, the report added.