A pair of astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to abandon plans to fit a replacement antenna after removing the faulty unit took far longer than expected, leaving no time to install the new one. NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot carried out the spacewalk on 18 August, but stubborn electrical connections and bolts ate into the schedule, forcing mission managers to postpone the installation to a future outing. The episode matters because the space-to-ground antenna provides high-data-rate communications via NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system, and although a second working antenna remains in use, engineers will want the redundancy restored as soon as possible.

The spacewalk had already been delayed once, after a carbon dioxide sensor in Menon's suit gave an unexpected reading during an earlier excursion on 6 August. The 18 August walk also made Adenot the first French woman to complete a spacewalk; she remained tethered to the station's truss while Menon worked from the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The pair managed to remove and temporarily secure the old antenna, but ran out of time to fit the spare before ground controllers called a halt. NASA has scheduled the next spacewalk for Tuesday 25 August but has not confirmed whether the unfinished antenna work will be included.