Jeff Williams, NASA’s astronaut on theInternational Space Station (ISS), will be accompanied by Kate Rubins on his fourth spacewalk on Friday. For Rubins, it is going to be her career’s first spacewalk. Both will remain out in the space for around six hours for arranging parking space for commercial spacecraft that would arrive on the ISS in near future.

Williams and Rubins will install an international docking adaptor sent by a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship last month. The adaptor will assist commercial spacecraft in their attempt to send astronauts to the ISS. This one is going to be first adaptor, while the second is expected to be sent to the ISS in 2018.

The adaptor,circular in shape, is around 42 inches tall and about 63 inches wide. It was built by Boeing. The adapter will work with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon. The two spacecraft yet under development will be used in the future to take astronauts to the ISS. The adaptor has functions that make space station to share power and data with the spacecraft.

The spacewalk will begin at 8:05 am (1205 GMT). When both spacewalkers will be outside the space station, an extension of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, called the ‘Dextre’ Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) will help them do their operations. The robotic arm will transport the bulky adaptor closer to the place of its installation.

"This is the first time that the EV crew members have actually taken a handoff from the SPDM. We have to be very careful about putting loads into the SPDM. In space, it has got a lot of capability, but on the ground it can barely support it”, said lead spacewalk officer Glenda Brown.

According to a report in Nature World News by Sky Selrach, "The announcement was made during a press conference held Thursday by NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development, Bill Hill. The influx of commercial launches to the ISS would reduce NASA's involvement in the project."

NASA's decision to hand over the ISS to a commercial company isn't surprising given the funds set aside by the American government. Funds given by the government for the ISS to remain in orbit was originally set until
2016. The deorbiting date extended to 2024 thanks to President Barack Obama. The additional funds had extended the ISS operations.

Since 2012, SpaceX has run resupply missions for NASA and the ISS. Currently, it has completed nine missions. Aside from missions to ISS, SpaceX has already set out plans for their journey to the red planet. In fact, CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk appears to be more interested to making it to planet Mars than building more commercial space stations. On the other hand, Boeing has made no plans for their journey to the red planet.

A report published in Phys informed, "Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins will step outside the orbiting laboratory to attach an international docking adaptor launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship last month. NASA describes the equipment as "a metaphorical gateway to a future" that will allow a new generation of US spacecraft-the first since the space shuttle program ended in 2011-to carry astronauts to the space station."

The adaptors will work with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon, two spaceships under construction that are planned to ferry astronauts to the space station. The docking adaptor is more sophisticated than past equipment because it will allow automatic parking instead of the current grapple and berthing process managed by astronauts.

Once the spacewalkers-also known as extravehicular (EV) crew-are outside the space station, an extension of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, called the "Dextre" Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM), will push the bulky adaptor even closer to its installation point.