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Are nighttime space-walks common? I'd imagine you'd want to schedule them when you have sunlight to avoid any unnecessary complications. I mean their schedule e
by prawks 14y ago
Are nighttime space-walks common? I'd imagine you'd want to schedule them when you have sunlight to avoid any unnecessary complications. I mean their schedule each day is jam packed, but I'd imagine it wouldn't be too much trouble to schedule around nighttime?
EDIT: Duh, orbit is much faster than a 24-hour day...
- ra 14y agoFor the ISS, an orbital day is about 90 minutes.
- Diederich 14y agoThe ISS orbits every 90 minutes. Any non-trivial space-walk will be in darkness at least part of the time.
- jamesmontalvo3 14y agoDepending upon the Beta Angle [1], the spacewalk could be in sunlight the entire time (though that's rare). It could be in darkness up to about 50% of the time. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_angle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_angle
- Ankaios 14y agoThey are in low-Earth orbit. Each orbit only takes about 90 minutes, and half of each is daytime and half is night. Since space walks are typically several hours long, they are typically half in night and half in daylight.
- pacifist117 14y agothe oribital period of the ISS is 92 minutes 50 seconds. Therefore they do not experience a 24 hour day cycle as we do here on Earth. So the term "nighttime" doesn't have the same meaning. However there are orbits that are more heliosynchronous than others providing more solar time. At this moment it seems that the ISS is in an pass that is more than 50% solar time as can be seen on sites such as this one: http://iss.astroviewer.net/ http://iss.astroviewer.net/.