MOSCOW, June 22. /TASS/. Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, who is also a TASS special correspondent, have opened the exit hatch of the International Space Station's Poisk module and began the fourth spacewalk under the Russian program for 2023. The extra-vehicular activity is being streamed on the state corporation's website.

Old communication equipment is to be removed from the Zvezda module. Prokopyev and Petelin will install a new high-speed radio transmission system in its place.

In addition, the cosmonauts will remove from the module Zvezda seismic forecast equipment, a case with samples being used in the experiment Impact and a removable cassette with samples of materials that have spent 19 years outside the station. In conclusion Prokopyev and Petelin will also dismantle one of the three containers of Biorisk-MSN equipment from the Poisk module. The cosmonauts are expected to spend 6 hours and 51 minutes outside the ISS.

This is a seventh spacewalk in the career of Sergey Prokopyev, who is wearing an Orlan-MKS space suit with red stripes, and a fifth for Dmitry Petelin, whose Orlan-MKS suit has blue stripes. Before the spacewalk the cosmonauts made the standard preparations. As the TASS special correspondent reported last week, all of the spacesuits’ replaceable elements were put in place and the batteries charged.

The previous spacewalks under the Russian program took place in the early morning hours of April 19, the night of May 4 and the evening of May 12. During the three spacewalks, the airlock and the heat exchanger were transferred to the multipurpose laboratory module Nauka and installed.