Cosmonauts Complete Spacewalk to Prepare for Arrival of New Space Station Module

MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — The exit hatch of the Small Research Module “Poisk” is closed, cosmonauts of the Roscosmos detachment Oleg Novitsky and Peter Dubrov completed the 48th planned spacewalk (EVK-48). On their debut, they successfully completed all the equipment installation work on the outer surface of the Russian segment of the International Space Station. The hatch of the Poisk docking bay was closed at 16:12 Moscow time on June 2, 2021. The duration of the extravehicular activity was 7 hours 19 minutes.

For the second time in the history of the operation of the International Space Station, the Russian spacewalk was carried out from the docking compartment of the Poisk module. It was launched in 2009, but until November 18, 2020, astronauts used the Pirs module for exits, which is currently preparing for undocking from the ISS. This is the 55th Russian exit from the ISS, the first in 2021 and the first in the careers of both Roscosmos cosmonauts.

As Oleg Novitsky noted earlier, the peculiarity of spacewalk is the combination of resource work, space experiments and preparation of the International Space Station to receive the new module “Science”, which is scheduled to launch this summer.

In 7 hours, Oleg Novitsky and Petr Dubrov replaced the removable panel of the fluid flow regulator in the thermal control system of the Zarya functional cargo unit in the normal mode and threw the old panel into space. According to the preliminary assessment of the specialists of the Mission Control Center, the pressurized container left the International Space Station in the right direction. Within the next 2-3 days, it will completely burn out in the dense layers of the atmosphere. The operation to replace the regulator in the thermal control system in the entire history of the ISS has already been performed three times due to the end of its life.

In addition, the Russian crew members of the 65th long-term expedition prepared for undocking the Pirs module, which arrived in 2001. They removed all external connections between Pirs and the International Space Station: for this they removed the modernized cargo boom M1 from the module, re-docked the cables of the Kurs rendezvous system antennas and removed the halyard between the Russian Pirs and Zvezda modules. At the end of this operation, Russian specialists confirmed that the test of the Kurs system after reconnecting the connectors was successful. Oleg Novitsky and Petr Dubrov also installed new equipment for the Russian scientific experiments “Test” and “Endurance” to study the effect of space conditions on various microorganisms and materials.

Today’s extravehicular activities were carried out in Orlan-MKS spacesuits (modernized, computerized, synthetic), one with red stripes (Oleg Novitsky), the other with blue (Petr Dubrov). The previous release took place on November 18, 2020. From the Earth, from the Mission Control Center TsNIIMash (part of the State Corporation Roscosmos), specialists from the Main Operational Control Group of the Russian Segment of the ISS (SP Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, part of Roscosmos) controlled the spacewalk.

Currently, a crew consisting of Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Peter Dubrov, NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hai, Shane Kimbrow, Megan MacArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Tom Peske and Japan Aerospace Research Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide are on board the International Space Station.