WATCH: NASA Astronauts Christina Koch, Jessica Meir Ready for Monday’s Spacewalk

live coverage Monday at 5:30 a.m. EST

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(NASA) – The second of three spacewalks planned for January begins Monday to continue upgrading International Space Station power systems and a cosmic ray detector.

While the spacewalkers ready their suits and tools, the rest of the Expedition 61 crew is on science and maintenance duty.

NASA Flight Engineer Jessica Meir is partnering for a second time with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch for a spacewalk set for Monday.

The duo is finalizing preparations for the six-and-a-half hour spacewalk to finish replacing batteries that store and distribute solar power. They will set their U.S. spacesuits to internal power at 6:50 a.m. and translate out to the Port-6 truss structure.

Once there they swap out old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries. NASA TV begins its live coverage Monday at 5:30 a.m. EST.

A third spacewalk is planned for Jan. 25 with NASA Flight Engineer Andrew Morgan and Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency). They will finish the thermal repair work on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer they began last year.

These will be the second and third spacewalks for Meir, who will be extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1) for both spacewalks. Koch, who will be extravehicular crew member 2 (EV2), will perform the fifth and sixth spacewalks of her career.

Morgan, who will be EV1 for the AMS spacewalk, and Parmitano, who will be EV2, performed the three previous spacewalks to repair the spectrometer, which is searching for dark matter and antimatter in the universe using the station’s unique location and capabilities for scientific research.

The spacewalks will be the 225th, 226th and 227th in support of space station assembly and maintenance.

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