American astronauts Kathleen Rubins and Victor Glover began preparing to replace solar panels with
Astronauts went into space at 06:00 US East Coast Time (14:00 Moscow time). Rubins and Glover will spend about six and a half hours there. During this time, they must have time to complete the necessary tasks.
The astronauts will have to carry out preparatorywork before installing new solar panels. The ones installed on the ISS now work fine. But signs of wear are already visible. The batteries were installed in December 2000. That is, they powered the ISS for more than 20 years.
Installation of new batteries is due later in 2021.