2 Russian cosmonauts perform spacewalk outside ISS
The International Space Station was photographed by Expedition 56 crew members from a Soyuz spacecraft after undocking on October 4, 2018. Two Russian cosmonauts will perform a spacewalk outside the station on Thursday. File Photo courtesy of NASA/Roscosmos
Two Russian cosmonauts will perform a spacewalk outside the International Space Station to install an experiment package on one of the modules on Thursday morning.
Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner will leave the confines of the ISS to attach the package designed to monitor celestial X-ray sources and new electrical connector patch panels on the station’s Poisk module. Advertisement
Cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov will operate the ISS’s robotic arm from inside during the spacewalk. The spacewalk is expected to last nearly seven hours.
They are also expected to remove several experiments for disposal. The cosmonauts will relocate a control panel for the European robotic arm.
It marks the space station’s 272nd spacewalk for maintenance and upgrades to the orbiting laboratory.
Ovchinin and Vagner have been living in the space station since Sept. 11 on the Soyuz MS-26 mission along with NASA astronaut Doug Pettit.