On August 19, 2016 American astronauts Jeffrey Williams and Kathleen Rubins performed the spacewalk to attach docking adapter to space station for commercial vehicles. Attached to the station’s no-longer-needed shuttle port at the front of the station, the Boeing-built International Docking Adapter will allow spacecraft from Boeing and SpaceX companies to bring crews to the ISS, ending NASA’s sole reliance on Russian Soyuz ferry spaceships. The new docking mechanism was carried up to the station aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship in June. The EVA lasted 5 hours and 58 minutes. It was the fourth spacewalk for Jeffrey Williams and the first one for Kathleen Rubins.

On August 19, 2016 at 04:52 UTC the “Delta-4” rocket-carrier was launched from Cape Canaveral launch site of US Air Force. The launch was performed by United Launch Alliance supported by the 45th Space Wing of US Air Force. The rocket orbited two surveillance satellites - GSSAP (Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program). Although many of the technical specifications of the GSSAP satellites remain classified, the Air Force says the spacecraft have optical payloads to image the location, orbit, size and status of space objects.