MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Progress MS resupply ships will deliver two new Orlan-ISS spacesuits to the International Space Station (ISS) for Russian cosmonauts to carry out extravehicular activity, Director General of the Zvezda R&D and Production Enterprise (part of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos) Sergey Pozdnyakov told TASS on Tuesday.

Pozdnyakov said in 2022 that the Zvezda enterprise had begun making three Orlan-ISS spacesuits to replace the outfits available aboard the space station. The first of them, Orlan-ISS No.6 was delivered to the orbital outpost on March 2 of this year.

"The seventh and eighth spacesuits are in the works. We are due to provide one such spacesuit in the middle of this year timed for the launch of a space freighter in August, if I am not mistaken, and one more a bit later, in November-December… The first spacewalks using the new spacesuits are scheduled for the end of the year," the Zvezda head said.

The delivery of the new spacesuits does not mean that the outfits Orlan-ISS No. 4 and Orlan-ISS No. 5 currently in service aboard the orbital outpost will have to be immediately disposed of, he said.

"We have not yet delivered new and are in no hurry to discard old spacesuits: we even have one Orlan-MK spacesuit in a semi-disassembled condition. It is even used in some cases as spare parts," he said.

The Orlan-ISS differs from the previous Orlan-MK model by its new inner airtight casing made of hi-tech fabric with a long service life and a new automated water cooling system that automatically maintains the most comfortable temperature for an operator. In addition, the spacesuit integrates a new data projection system.