ISS Russian crewmembers go on spacewalk
KOROLYOV, Moscow region. June 24 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian astronauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin have opened the hatch of the International Space Station (ISS) Pirs module's airlock chamber and gone on a spacewalk, an Interfax-AVN correspondent reports from the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolyov.
"The spacewalk has begun," the Center told Interfax-AVN.
Yurchikhin, who has been on five spacewalks with the total duration of 32 hours, is wearing the commander spacesuit with red strips on the sides. Misurkin, who is making his first spacewalk, is wearing the engineer spacesuit with blue strips on the sides.
The astronauts will replace panel No 2 in the liquid flow regulator of the Zarya functional and cargo module and install racks for power cables and the Indicator equipment for the Control experiment on the Poisk small research module.
They will also dismantle the Vynoslivost experiment panel from the exterior of the Poisk module. The panel was supposed to stay on the Poisk exterior for another year but Russian astronaut Pavel Vinogradov dropped a panel installed earlier during his spacewalk in April and researchers asked to deliver this one.
The Vynoslivost experiment studies the influence of space factors on deformation, durability and fatigue of burdened and non-burdened samples. The experiment samples and equipment weigh eleven kilograms.
The astronauts will install five soft handles for facilitating the movement of crews on the exterior of the Zvezda service module, dismantle the scientific equipment of Photon-Gamma from the universal work place on the Zvezda module and test the Kurs equipment.
Numerous spacewalks have been planned from the ISS for the next few months. U.S. astronaut Christopher Cassidy and European astronaut Luca Parmitano will go on spacewalks on July 9 and 16. Misurkin and Yurchikhin will go on spacewalks again on August 15 and 21.