December 23, 2024

Spacewalks and Cargo Ships: Space Station Crew Gears Up for a Busy Week in Orbit

Leader Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin are set to begin their second spacewalk together at 9:30 p.m. EDT (6:30 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday. Prokopyev and Petelin likewise set up their spacewalking tools, set up parts on their Orlan spacesuits, and organized the Poisk modules airlock where they will leave the station.

Roscosmos Flight Engineer Andrey Fedyaev will assist the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits on Tuesday and command the European robotic arm to navigate the radiator and connect it to Nauka. NASA TV begins its live spacewalk protection at 9 p.m. on Tuesday on the companys app and site.
The European robotic arm is seen attached to the Nauka module of the International Space Station, the worksite for todays spacewalk by 2 cosmonauts. Credit: NASA
2 NASA Flight Engineers spent Monday cleaning up after the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft left the orbital outpost on Saturday returning 4,300 pounds of science experiments and station hardware back to Earth for analysis. Astronauts Woody Hoburg and Frank Rubio cleaned and stowed biology hardware real estate samples that were delivered back to Earth aboard Dragon. Those samples and others will now be examined by researchers to comprehend how the body adapts to working and living in weightlessness.
The 3 flight engineers are loading trash and other discarded gear inside the Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter before it leaves the station later this week. Alneyadi will be on task that early morning monitoring Cygnus as mission controllers on the ground command the Canadarm2 robotic arm to launch the spacecraft from the Unity modules Earth-facing port.
Finally, Alneyadi and NASA Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen interacted resizing a set of EMUs in the Quest airlock. The 2 astronauts are getting the U.S. spacesuits all set for an approaching spacewalk to continue updating the stations power generation capability.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev lays cable for the setup of the Icarus animal-tracking experiment on the Zvezda service module during a spacewalk in 2018. Fellow cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev (out of frame) signed up with Prokopyev throughout the spacewalk which likewise saw the release of 4 nano-satellites and the retrieval of a products direct exposure experiment on the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin prepare for a series of spacewalks to move a radiator at the International Space Station, while NASA astronauts tidy up after the departure of a freight craft, and resize spacesuits for future power upgrade objectives.
Spacewalk preparations are underway at the International Space Station (ISS) as two cosmonauts prepare yourself for the very first of 3 spacewalks set to begin on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. The rest of the Expedition 69 team is tidying up following the departure of a U.S. cargo craft while likewise working on a set of Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs), or spacesuits.
Leader Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin are set to begin their 2nd spacewalk together at 9:30 p.m. EDT (6:30 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday. The duo spent Monday evaluating the tasks needed to move a radiator from the Rassvet module to the Nauka science module during the prepared six-hour and 40-minute excursion. Prokopyev and Petelin also set up their spacewalking tools, installed elements on their Orlan spacesuits, and arranged the Poisk modules airlock where they will leave the station.

2 NASA Flight Engineers invested Monday cleaning up after the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft departed the orbital station on Saturday returning 4,300 pounds of science experiments and station hardware back to Earth for analysis. The 3 flight engineers are packing trash and other discarded gear inside the Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter prior to it leaves the station later this week.