Moscow: Two Russian cosmonauts on the
International Space Station conducted a spacewalk today to
activate a new module and make it ready for docking with
Russian spacecraft.
Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said Maxim Suraev
and Oleg Kotov left the station at 1:05 PM Moscow time (1005
GMT) on a mission that is expected to last nearly six hours.
Lyndin said the two cosmonauts will work on the Russian
Poisk module to link it to the station's communications and
power systems and prepare it for future dockings with the
Russian spacecraft. The research module was launched in
November.
The spacewalk was the third one for Kotov, who made two
spacewalks in 2007 totalling more than 11 hours, and the first
for Suraev.
Americans Jeff Williams and Timothy J Creamer and Soichi
Noguchi of Japan are supporting the mission from inside the
space station.
Suraev and Williams, the station's commander, will be the
first to use the new docking port when they relocate their
Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from another docking port on the
station next week.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010, 20:09