Watch Live: International Space Station Astronauts Conduct Spacewalk To Fix Robotic Arm

Early Tuesday morning two NASA astronauts are scheduled to complete a spacewalk for NASA to do maintenance work on the Canadarm2 attached to the International Space Station. The walk was scheduled weeks ago for the astronauts and it will go ahead even with the recent government shutdown.

Monday afternoon the Senate passed a resolution that would extend the funding of the government for three weeks, if the House passes it as well then presumably, NASA would broadcast the walk come Tuesday morning.

As of Monday at 3 p.m. ET the NASA TV website said, “Due to the government shutdown, NASA Television is unavailable. We regret the inconvenience,” on both the Public and the Media channels of the site.

One of the astronauts scheduled to conduct the walk, Scott Tingle, tweeted Sunday and said, “Spacewalk!... January 23rd. Be there! Watch on NASA TV,” implying that the walk would still happen during the shutdown as would the video coverage.

If the launch is unavailable on the NASA channel Tuesday morning, the Canadian Space Agency said it will be offering a live feed of the walk on its Facebook page. That coverage was expected to begin at 7:10 a.m. ET and last about six hours.

The astronauts are scheduled to replace one of the two redundant latching end effectors, or LEE, according to a NASA release. These are located on the Canadarm2 and require the maintenance because they have “experienced some degradation of its snaring cables,” NASA said.

Due to the shutdown, NASA was not posting to any social media accounts and requests from International Business Times went unanswered Monday.

​​