Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 83 How to Plan a Space Walk.

I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast we bring in the experts, NASA scientists,

engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know the

coolest information about what's going on right here at NASA.

So if you're familiar with us, you may know that NASA is full of acronyms and abbreviations.

We try really hard to stay away from as many as we can, but sometimes

it's just really hard to avoid. Here's one that we use all the time here, EVA. You may have heard

it before. It stands for extra vehicular activity. Broken down, it's literally just working outside of a spacecraft.

Astronauts get in spacesuits and go outside to work on different things.

They've done EVA's on on the moon and now they're

going to perform EVAs for maintenance and upgrades on the International Space Station

they're still doing it now. Today's EVAs are planned months or sometimes years in advance for a six and a half hour run.

Activities are well coordinated and jam-packed into that time, and it's a long day for the astronauts, including the time before and after that time. And it's a long day for the astronauts including the time before and after that run.

So today we're exploring what goes on to plan a spacewalk.

With me is Tara Yoakum and Art Thomason.

Tara is the project manager for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer EVA repair.

This is a big deal and we'll get into some of it.

Art is an EVA flight controller and instructor, one of the guys sitting in mission control during a

spacewalk that knows the intricate procedures of every move. So with no further

...