How to Watch a Spacewalk Live

Somewhere over your head right now, the International Space Station is doing 17,500 mph — and a few times a year, two people in white suits open a hatch and climb outside of it. A spacewalk is the closest thing spaceflight has to live theater: six-plus hours of helmet-camera views, Earth rolling past underneath, and two astronauts doing precision work in a vacuum with nothing but a tether holding them to the ship. NASA broadcasts every minute of it, free. In August 2026 there are three on the calendar — here’s the schedule, where to watch, and how to actually enjoy a broadcast that runs longer than a transatlantic flight.

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The August 2026 spacewalk schedule

NASA announced three U.S. spacewalks at the space station for August 2026 — the 281st, 282nd, and 283rd in the station’s history — plus a preview news conference from Johnson Space Center on July 30 at 2 p.m. EDT, where the spacewalk officers walk through the choreography in advance. All of it streams free on NASA’s live channel.

• August 6 — U.S. Spacewalk 96. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (her sixth spacewalk — she was half of the first all-woman spacewalk back in 2019) and Anil Menon (his first) spend about six and a half hours outside. The job: install hardware to modify the station’s 3B power channel and set up for a future roll-out solar array. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 8:35 a.m. EDT, with live coverage from 7 a.m.
• August 13 — U.S. Spacewalk 97. Replacing a Space-to-Ground antenna — part of the communications system that carries data between the station and Mission Control. NASA will name the crew and timing closer to the date.
• August 25 — U.S. Spacewalk 98. Connecting power-channel cables, swapping data relay hardware, and installing a docking aid on the Harmony module — the port where crew capsules arrive. Crew and timing to be announced.

Dates like these are written in pencil, not ink — station operations get reshuffled around visiting vehicles and technical issues all the time. Check NASA’s coverage announcements the day before.

Where to watch (all of it is free)

NASA killed cable-only NASA TV and moved everything to NASA+, its free streaming service — no subscription, no account, no ads. You can watch at nasa.gov/live in any browser, in the NASA app on iOS or Android, on a smart TV (Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV all carry the NASA+ app), or on NASA’s YouTube channel, which simulcasts spacewalk coverage. The broadcast has live commentary from Mission Control explaining what you’re seeing — worth keeping on, because a spacewalk without narration is two white suits and a lot of cable-routing.

What you’ll actually see, hour by hour

A spacewalk broadcast has a rhythm, and knowing it makes the whole thing more watchable:

• Coverage starts (~90 minutes before). The crew is already in the airlock in their suits, pre-breathing pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from their blood — the same reason scuba divers ascend slowly. You’ll see suit checks and the slow depressurization of the airlock.
• The official start. A spacewalk formally begins when the suits switch to internal battery power — that’s the moment the clock starts, usually a few minutes before the hatch actually opens.
• Egress. The best few minutes of the broadcast: the hatch opens and the first astronaut backs out into the void, attaching tethers before anything else. Every crew member and every tool is tethered; nothing is allowed to float free.
• The work. Hours of methodical, checklist-driven labor, shown mostly through helmet cameras. In a pressurized glove, every squeeze of the hand is like working against a stiff spring for six hours — astronauts consistently rank spacewalks as the most physically exhausting thing they do. You’ll hear the crew call out every bolt turn to Houston.
• The view. The station crosses from daylight to darkness every 45 minutes, so you’ll watch about four sunrises and four sunsets per spacewalk, with helmet lights snapping on as the planet goes dark below.
• Ingress and repress. Back in the airlock, hatch sealed, pressure restored. The commentary team reads out the official duration and a summary of what got done.

Nobody watches all six hours flat — and that’s fine. The high points are the first hour (egress) and the last 30 minutes. Keep it on a second screen for the middle stretch and glance over whenever Houston’s tone changes. What the crew is going through inside those suits — the g-forces they trained under, what floating actually feels like — is its own story; our what space feels like guide covers it from the astronaut’s side of the visor.

Then step outside and see the station itself

Here’s the part most viewers never connect: the spaceship you just watched on a screen is visible from your backyard with no equipment at all. The ISS is the third-brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon — a brilliant, steadily moving star that crosses from horizon to horizon in about five minutes. It doesn’t blink (that’s a plane) and it doesn’t streak (that’s a meteor); it just glides. NASA’s Spot the Station service and the tracking apps in our astronomy apps guide will tell you the exact minute it rises over your town — passes happen in the hour or two after sunset or before sunrise, when the station is sunlit against a dark sky.

Binoculars turn the point of light into a shape: a steady 10× pair shows the golden glow of the solar arrays, and tracking the station as it moves is a genuine skill-check for a steady hand. The waterproof Celestron Nature DX 8x42 is my do-everything pick, and our astronomy binoculars guide has options at every budget. Watch the spacewalk in the morning, then walk outside that evening and watch the same ship fly over your house — that one-two is the whole reason this page exists.

Why these spacewalks matter

The August series is part of the station’s long-running power upgrade: the original solar arrays, launched starting in 2000, have degraded exactly as designed, and NASA has been bolting new roll-out arrays (called IROSAs) over the old ones since 2021. The August 6 work preps the 3B power channel for one of those installs. The antenna swap on August 13 and the docking-aid install on August 25 are the unglamorous plumbing of keeping a 25-year-old outpost flying — and with commercial stations lining up to replace the ISS in the 2030s, every one of these maintenance walks is also a rehearsal for the private stations that come next. Our commercial space stations guide covers who’s building them.

The bottom line

Three spacewalks in one month is an unusually rich run — most years average an EVA every month or two. Mark August 6, set the alarm for 7 a.m. EDT, and watch at least the first hour live; catch the other two as they firm up. It costs nothing, requires nothing, and it’s the closest view of working astronauts you can get without flying yourself. And when the broadcast ends, look up NASA’s Spot the Station for your town — the second act plays over your own roof.