By Samah Labib Thursday, August 10, 2023 10:00 PM A Russian astronaut completed the first test flight at the end of a robotic arm as part of spacewalk operation successfully on the International Space Station (ISS).
Flight 69 Commander Sergei Prokopyev rode at the end of the European robotic arm (ERA) to test the ruggedness and durability of a portable workstation. The arm was added to the International Space Station with the Nauka multipurpose science module in July 2021, but it didn’t enter service on the Russian segment until nearly a year later in April. 2022.
Since then, the ERA has been used to move a large radiator and experiment with an airlock, but this was the first time it had been used with a person on board.
Cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, who worked on a panel inside Nauka, controlled the 37-foot (11.3-meter) robotic arm as Prokopyev proceeded in the slow and steady flight, and Dmitry Petlin, who joined Prokopyev in the spacewalk, was placed , nearby to monitor and photograph the test.
The demonstration, which lasted about 40 minutes, showed that the arm, equipped with a portable workstation, could be used to reposition astronauts on future spacewalks, matching one of the capabilities of the station’s primary arm, Canadarm2, which supports the US operating sector.
Before today, even during spacewalks, crew members in EVAs (extravehicular activities) moved between modules using extendable, manually operated “Strela” arms.
In addition to testing the arm, Prokopyev and Petelin also installed debris guards to protect areas in the Rassvet mini-research module where the airlock and radiator were moved.
Two of the astronauts completed the spacewalk by throwing overboard the protective covers and releasing the restraints they had removed from the portable workstation earlier in the EVA, along with the towels they used to wipe down their spacesuits, and the navels were done carefully so that there was no chance of bundles bundled up in Facing the station before spent equipment returns to Earth and is destroyed.
Then Prokopyev and Beitlin returned to the space station and sealed the hatch, and the spacewalk began for 6 hours and 35 minutes.
Yesterday evening’s outing was 60 Russian airlocks and 267 EVAs in total to support the assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station since 1998. It was the tenth spaceflight taken on the space station this year and the eighth during Expedition 69 during Expedition 69.
Prokopyev, who served as Officer 1 Extravehicular Vehicle (EV-1), has now conducted eight spacewalks totaling 55 hours and 15 minutes, and Petelin, as EV-2, has completed his sixth career EVA, having now logged 39 hours And 44 minutes of work in the vacuum of space.
