MIAMI: A French and an American astronaut floated outside the International Space Station on Friday for a spacewalk to upgrade the orbiting outpost for the arrival of future space crews.

The spacewalk by France’s Thomas Pesquet, 39, and American Shane Kimbrough, 49, officially began at 7:24am when the duo switched their spacesuits to internal battery power.

Pesquet and Kimbrough worked separately as they prepared to install new docking ports for the next generation of commercial spacecraft and do some minor space station repairs and maintenance. The new crew spaceships, being designed by SpaceX and Boeing, should begin flying astronauts to the station in the coming years, as early as 2018.

Currently, the only way the world’s astronauts can reach orbit is by buying a ride aboard Russia’s Soyuz capsules, at $81 million per seat. Friday’s spacewalk is the second of Pesquet’s career, and the fifth for Kimbrough.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2017