MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, who is also a TASS special correspondent aboard the International Space Station (ISS), will perform their first spacewalk in 2023 to refit the Nauka multi-purpose lab module, Russian state-run space corporation Roscosmos has said.

Hatch of the Poisk module is expected to be opened at 04:30 a.m. Moscow time. The cosmonauts are to spend six hours and 37 minutes in space. Prokopyev will wear the Orlan-MKS N. 5 spacesuit with red stripes and Petelin - the Orlan-MKS N. 4 suit with blue stripes.

As part of the spacewalk, cosmonauts are to prepare an additional heat exchanger from the Rassvet module for transfer to the Nauka multi-purpose laboratory module. The transfer itself will be carried out by the ERA robotic arm, remotely operated by cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev from aboard the ISS.

Prokopyev and Petelin will monitor the manipulator’s work, and will attach the heat exchanger to the Nauka module once the transfer is over.

This work was expected to be carried out on November 25 but was postponed until December 15 over a malfunction of pumps in the cooling system of one of the cosmonauts’ spacesuits. In December, the spacewalk was postponed again, this time due to a leak from the external loop of the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft’s thermal control system.

It will be Prokopyev’s fourth and Petelin’s second spacewalk.