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Russian cosmonauts install X-ray spectrometer on Zvezda module’s exterior

The extravehicular activity is conducted by Ovchinin, who is wearing Orlan-ISS spacesuit No. 5 with red stripes, and Vagner, wearing Orlan-ISS spacesuit No. 4 with blue stripes

MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner installed and connected the SPIN-X1-MVN X-ray spectrometer on the Zvezda Service Module, according to a live stream on the website of the Russian state-run space corporation, Roscosmos.

Now, the cosmonauts are to dismantle research equipment from the Poisk module. Ovchinin will then position himself in the ERA's portable manipulator arm workstation and fling the dismantled items away from the ISS. The garbage will soon burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. The cosmonauts are expected to spend 6 hours and 43 minutes outside the ISS.

The extravehicular activity is conducted by Ovchinin, who is wearing Orlan-ISS spacesuit No. 5 with red stripes, and Vagner, wearing Orlan-ISS spacesuit No. 4 with blue stripes.

The exit hatch of the Poisk module was opened at 6:37 p.m. Moscow time (3:37 p.m. GMT). The spacewalk is estimated to last six hours and 43 minutes.

About the spectrometer

The spectrometer for the All Sky Monitor experiment was delivered to the station on the Progress MS-28 cargo spacecraft in August. In September, the Deputy Director of the Space Research Institute (SRI) under the Russian Academy of Sciences, associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Lutovinov told TASS that the device would be operational immediately after installation and perform 15 sky surveys in three years.

Lutovinov noted that the instrument would help scientists determine the number of supermassive black holes in the Universe and their contribution to its history by measuring the cosmic X-ray background - radiation made up of a huge number of distant objects that are almost impossible to view individually.

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