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Russian cosmonauts to spend over six and a half hours in December 15 spacewalk

As Roscosmos specified, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin are scheduled to open the hatch of the Poisk mini-research module at 5:20 a.m. Moscow time

MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin will spend six and a half hours outside the International Space Station (ISS) during their spacewalk on December 15, the Russian space agency announced on Wednesday.

"The spacewalk is scheduled to last six hours and 37 minutes," Roscosmos said in a statement.

As Roscosmos specified, the cosmonauts are scheduled to open the hatch of the Poisk mini-research module at 5:20 a.m. Moscow time. The teammates will control the transfer of a heat exchanger from the Rassvet mini-research module to the Nauka multipurpose lab on the ISS Russian segment. Roscosmos female cosmonaut Anna Kikina who will stay inside the orbital outpost will handle the radiator’s transfer with the help of the ERA robotic arm. Following this operation, cosmonauts Prokopyev and Petelin will take care of the radiator’s mechanical docking with the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

This work was expected to be carried out on November 25 but was postponed over a malfunction of pumps in the cooling system of one of the cosmonauts’ spacesuits.