“On Thursday, July 21, an ascent into free space from the Russian segment of the ISS took place between 16:50 and 23:55 CEST. Oleg Artěmjev (red distinguishing stripes) and Samantha Cristoforettiová (blue stripes) spent seven hours and five minutes outside the station and completed the planned tasks,” summarized on Twitter space specialist Michal Václavík from the Czech Space Agency and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.
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On Thursday, July 21, the 54th spacewalk from the Russian segment of the ISS took place (between 4:50 p.m. and 11:55 p.m. CEST), making it the 251st spacewalk as part of the ISS program. Oleg Artemyev and Samantha Cristoforetti spent 7 hours and 5 minutes outside the station and completed the planned tasks. pic.twitter.com/QDssNEFl1o
— Michal Vaclavik (@Kosmo_Michal) July 22, 2022
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Stop using it, former boss Rogozin ordered
Among the tasks of the pair during the ascent, among other things, was work on the European-made robotic arm (ERA), which recently found itself at the center of tensions between Moscow and the West due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as recalled by the AFP agency.
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Earlier last week, the head of the Russian space corporation Roskosmos at the time, Dmitry Rogozin, ordered cosmonauts on the ISS to stop using the device.
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He was reacting to the decision of the European Space Agency (ESA) regarding the ExoMars mission, which the European agency suspended after the Russian invasion of Ukraine – and then definitively terminated cooperation on it with Roskosmos. The mission was to send a rover to the red planet at the end of 2022, which had the task of searching for signs of extraterrestrial life.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed Rogozin from the post of head of Roscosmos last Friday, and a little later Washington and Moscow announced that they would resume joint flights to the ISS.
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Cristoforetti and Artemjev now specifically installed the ERA manipulator adapter to the BTP-2 passive point on the Poisk module. The robotic arm will be used to move cargo, equipment and even people who go on “space walks”, added Reuters.
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(2/4) The output should last 6 hours and 35 minutes and there are around 40 partial tasks waiting for both of them. The main ones include the launch of eight CubeSats JuZGU-55 and two Tsiolkovsky-Ryazan. Next, they install the ERA manipulator adapter to the BTP-2 passive point on the Poisk module. They then move to the Learning module. pic.twitter.com/dDaKulSmGb
— Michal Vaclavik (@Kosmo_Michal) July 21, 2022
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Part of the description of the advertised job (post from Thursday)
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The pair then moved to Russia’s Nauka laboratory module. Here they both prepared a BTL-4 attachment point on which they will install a platform with adapters for the manipulator. According to Václavík, another part of the output was taken up by work on the Poisk and Zvezda modules and the installation of the end points of the GStM-1 and 2 cranes. They also launched several so-called CubeSats.
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Forty-five-year-old former fighter pilot and current ESA astronaut Cristoforetti is on her second space mission, but her first time climbing “out” into open space. The Italian woman holds the record for the duration of a woman’s stay in space – in 2014 and 2015 she spent 199 days in orbit.
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For Artemyev, who is the current commander of the ISS, it was the sixth ascent into space, but for the first time he did so with a colleague other than a cosmonaut from Russia, AFP noted.
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The International Space Station has long symbolized closer ties between Russia and the United States. It currently remains one of the last areas of cooperation between Moscow and the West, which has imposed sanctions on Russia over its military aggression in Ukraine.
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The crew is said to be getting along
Despite the tense situation on Earth, the seven ISS residents, according to the AP agency, have repeatedly claimed that they get along well in orbit, as do the management teams in Houston and Moscow.
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The current staff of the orbital complex consists of three Americans Jessica Watkins, Robert Hines and Kjell Lindgren from the NASA space agency, three Russians Sergey Korsakov, Denis Matveyev and the aforementioned Artemyev from Roskosmos, and the Italian Cristoforetti from ESA.
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Controversy, however, arose especially on Earth when, at the beginning of July, Russian cosmonauts celebrated the conquest of eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region by Russian forces. Roskosmos published imageson which the Russian crew poses with the flags of pro-Russian – Luhansk and Donetsk – separatists.
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