Expedition 50 crewmates Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson will work outside the International Space Station on Thursday (March 30) to reconnect a docking port relocated at the orbiting outpost.
The two spacewalkers are scheduled to begin the spacewalk at about 7 a.m. CDT (1200 GMT). The extravehicular activity (EVA) is slated to take about six and a half hours to complete.
Kimbrough and Whitson will run cables and electrical connections to Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3), which was robotically moved on March 26 from the Tranquility module to the Harmony module on the station. PMA-3 provides an interface between the station and visiting vehicles that come to dock.
The PMA will later be outfitted with an international docking adapter (IDA), to be delivered on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft later this year, so that it can be used by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft.
During Thursday's spacewalk, Kimbrough and Whitson will also install the second of the two upgraded computer relay boxes on the station's truss and install shields and covers on PMA-3 and the now-vacant common berthing mechanism port on Tranquility.
This will be the 199th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance. It will be Kimbrough's sixth EVA and the eighth by Whitson, who will surpass NASA astronaut Sunita Williams' record for the most spacewalks by a woman.