Russian cosmonauts all set for ISS spacewalk today

Photo credit: NASA

Washington: Two Russian cosmonauts are all set for a spacewalk to install hardware and science experiments outside the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday.

According to NASA, veteran flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Sergey Volkov will don their spacesuits and exit the station's Pirs airlock at approximately 8:10 a.m. EST Wednesday, the second spacewalk for Expedition 46 in less than a month.

A spacewalk on 15 January by Britain's first official astronaut Tim Peake and American Tim Kopra was terminated after a bubble of water was found in Kopra's helmet.

Their objectives are to deploy and retrieve several experiment packages on the Zvezda and Poisk modules and install devices called gap spanners, which will be placed on the hull of the station to facilitate the movement of crew members on future spacewalks.

The duo, wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits bearing blue stripes, are scheduled to work outside in their Russian Orlan spacesuits for about 5 hours and 30 minutes on scheduled maintenance tasks.

This will be the sixth spacewalk for Malenchenko and the fourth for Volkov.

Meanwhile, Tim Peake collected and tested samples from water dispensers in the US and Russian segments of the orbital lab. The samples will also be returned to Earth inside a Soyuz spacecraft for further analysis.

(Source: NASA)