ISS, November 18. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, who is also a TASS special correspondent on the ISS, have completed the spacewalk, according to a Roscosmos live broadcast.
"The new day begins ... and the spacewalk is complete," Roscosmos confirmed on its Telegram channel.
The cosmonauts began extravehicular activities at 5:39 p.m. Moscow time on Thursday. They spent 6 hours and 25 minutes in outer space. For Prokopyev it was the third spacewalk of his career, while Petelin sucessfully accomplished his first one.
After beginning spacewalk, Petelin reported back to Earth that his sensor showed "high gas temperature". An expert from the Mission Control Center (MCC) told him that "the sensor is wrong <...> everything is normal."
The cosmonauts then proceeded to move to the Rassvet module. There they installed the cargo boom adapter, prepared the radiator for transfer to the Nauka research module. Among other things, the cosmonauts blew off the conservation nitrogen pressure and dismantled the ties. This radiator is needed to remove additional thermal loads from the research module during scientific experiments. The radiator transfer will take place during one of the next spacewalks using the ERA robotic arm.
Cosmonauts also installed an interlock on the cargo boom, which crew members can use to move between the Zarya and Poisk modules, and deployed a fastener for large objects on the Nauka module.
A good joke
During extravehicular activities, specialists repeatedly let the cosmonauts rest and recover, as there was a lot of fine motor work to be done. At this point, Prokopyev and Petelin photographed the ISS, or each other.
So, about five hours after opening the hatch, they were asked to take a picture of the fastener. "A good joke, we won’t be able to push the button now," the cosmonauts responded, but Petelin turned the camera on anyways and completed the task.
When the work was almost completed, the cosmonauts traditionally inspected the spacesuits. The experts asked Sergey Prokopyev to clean Dmitry Petelin's spacesuit. "Scruffy. Okay, well, looks like it’s done. Let's look at the back. The back looks clean," Prokopyev concluded.
The Russian crew members then returned to the Poisk module and completed their extravehicular activities.
As Roscosmos previously reported, this extravehicular activity set a record for spacewalks under the Russian program for the year. It was the seventh. Prior to that, the record was set in 2013. At that time cosmonauts made six spacewalks under the Russian program.