12 May 2023 20:49

Russian ISS crew members begin working outside station

MOSCOW. May 12 (Interfax) - The Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, have begun a spacewalk to integrate an additional radiator with the Nauka module, a Roscosmos broadcast said.

At 6:46 p.m. Moscow time, the cosmonauts opened an exit hatch on the Poisk module of the ISS's Russian segment and began to exit the station. The spacewalk is expected to last six hours and 18 minutes.

The main purpose of the spacewalk is to deploy and integrate the additional radiator on the Russian Nauka module.

During their extravehicular activity (EVA-58), Prokopyev and Petelin will remove two clamps from the radiator and unfurl its panels. They will then fill its hydraulic circuits with a heating agent and merge them with those of the module's heat supply system.

Following this, the cosmonauts will install two tethers on the European Robotic Arm (ERA).

This will be Prokopyev's sixth and Petelin's fourth spacewalk.

The previous spacewalk took place in the early hours (Moscow time) of May 4, when the cosmonauts successfully transferred the airlock chamber from the Rassvet module to the Nauka module with the aid of the ERA.

Roscosmos announced in late March that a series of spacewalks would take place in the spring and summer of 2023 to complete Nauka's integration with the Russian segment.