Two Russian cosmonauts prepare to carry out a spacewalk mission on the International Space Station (ISS), Tuesday (18/4/2023) evening. Photos/NASA/Space
The two Russian cosmonauts who will carry out the spacewalk mission are Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. Previously they had twice failed to carry out spacewalk missions due to various technical problems.
First on November 25, 2023, their spacewalk mission failed due to a space suit pump disturbance. Three weeks later, the attempted spacewalk mission on December 15, 2023 was also aborted after the leak of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
This time the two cosmonauts are scheduled to do a spacewalk from the Russian Poisk spaceport on the ISS. They will be wearing the new spacesuits, Orlan.
“From there (Poisk), the two will maneuver to the Earth-facing side of the station and begin work on moving the radiators and experiment modules,” read a NASA blog post quoted by SINDOnews from the Space page, Tuesday (18/4/2023).
In this mission, the two cosmonauts will move two large pieces of equipment from the Rassvet module, namely the Rassvet radiator and airlock. The two test kits were sent into space in May 2010 on the space shuttle STS-132 mission.
Now the Russian space agency Roscosmos plans to transfer the equipment to Russia’s newest Nauka science laboratory which has just launched on the ISS in 2021. During all these spacewalks, cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will assist with robotic activities from inside the ISS using the European Space Agency’s robotic arm in Nauka , including carrying out the transfer of equipment after the preparatory activities are completed.
Prokopyev will wear his Orlan spacesuit with red stripes for tonight’s spacewalk, while Petelin will wear blue stripes. This spacewalk will be the third on the ISS in 2023, following the two previous missions by NASA astronauts on January 20 and February 2.
This spacewalk mission is Petelin’s second and Prokopyev’s fourth. In fact, Prokopyev has accumulated longer flight hours, almost 22 hours.
(wib)
