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Roscosmos cosmonaut, ESA astronaut embark on spacewalk for work with robotic arm

Oleg Artemyev will conduct the sixth spacewalk in his career as a cosmonaut, while Samantha Cristoforetti will carry out extravehicular activity for the first time

ISS, July 21. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonaut and TASS special reporter Oleg Artemyev and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti opened the exit hatch of the Poisk module on the International Space Station (ISS) to begin their extravehicular activity under the Russian program, Roscosmos said in a live broadcast on its website on Thursday.

The crew members are set to integrate the adapter of the ERA robotic arm on the Poisk module and also to launch ten nanosatellites under the program of the RadioSkaf research and educational experiment, Roscosmos said.

Artemyev will conduct the sixth spacewalk in his career as a cosmonaut while Cristoforetti will carry out extravehicular activity for the first time. The spacewalk is expected to last about six and a half hours. The Roscosmos cosmonaut is using the Orlan-ISS spacesuit No. 5 with red stripes while the ESA astronaut is wearing the Orlan-ISS outfit No. 4 with blue stripes.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Artemyev earlier said that the cosmonauts could set a record by the number of small spacecraft launched during a spacewalk. A total of ten mini-satellites are set to be launched: six YuZGU-55 No. 5-10 nanosatellites delivered to the orbital outpost aboard the Progress MS-19 space freighter in February and two pairs of YuZGU-55 No. 11 and No. 12 and Tsiolkovsky-Ryazan No. 1 and No. 2 small space vehicles brought to the flying laboratory by the Progress MS-20 resupply ship.

Former Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin earlier said that the Russian crew aboard the ISS would stop using the European ERA manipulator arm installed on the Russian Nauka module in response to ESA’s refusal to cooperate on the ExoMars project.