MOSCOW, August 9. /TASS/. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin who is also a TASS special reporter in space opened the exit hatch of the Poisk module aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to embark on their fifth spacewalk this year, Roscosmos reported in a live broadcast on its website on Wednesday.
Under the Russian program of their new spacewalk, Prokopyev and Petelin will mount additional micrometeoroid protection shields on the Rassvet module in the spots vacated after the transfer of a heat exchanger and an airlock to the Nauka research lab. The cosmonauts will also prepare a portable workplace on the Rassvet module designed for fixing the cosmonaut’s position and his movements.
With the help of the ERA robotic arm, Prokopyev will be transferred in his workplace in test mode for the first time. His teammate Andrey Fedyayev will control the process from aboard the orbital station. The cosmonauts are expected to spend six hours and 45 minutes in their extravehicular activity.
This spacewalk will be the eighth in the space career of Prokopyev who will work outside the orbital station in spacesuit Orlan-ISS No. 5 with red stripes and the sixth for Petelin who will wear spacesuit Orlan-ISS No. 4 with blue stripes.
Before their spacewalk, the Russian cosmonauts conducted preparatory work with the spacesuits. As the TASS special reporter in orbit informed on August 7, he checked together with Prokopyev the air tightness and parameters of the spacesuits.
The ISS Russian crew carried out their previous extravehicular activity on the evening of June 22. During their work outside the orbital outpost, they dismantled the old communications equipment from the Zvezda module and installed a new high-speed data transmission radio-technical system (RSPI-M). To date, they have carried out four spacewalks this year.