Spacewalkers Exit Station to Configure New Robotic Arm

Exp 67 Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA began a spacewalk at 10:50am ET to continue outfitting the European robotic arm on the space station’s Nauka laboratory by opening the hatch of the Poisk docking compartment airlock.
Exp 67 Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA began a spacewalk at 10:50am ET to continue outfitting the European robotic arm on the space station’s Nauka laboratory by opening the hatch of the Poisk docking compartment airlock.

Expedition 67 Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) began a spacewalk at 10:50 a.m. EDT to continue outfitting the European robotic arm on the International Space Station’s Nauka laboratory by opening the hatch of the Poisk docking compartment airlock. Coverage of the spacewalk continues on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

One of the first tasks will see Artemyev and Cristoforetti deploy 10 nanosatellites designed to collect radio electronics data during the spacewalk, which will be the 251st in support of station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

The duo will install platforms and workstation adapter hardware near the 37-foot-long manipulator system mounted to Nauka. The spacewalkers also will relocate the arm’s external control panel, replace a protective window on the arm’s camera unit, and extend a Strela telescoping boom from Zarya to Poisk to facilitate future spacewalks.

Artemyev is wearing a Russian spacesuit with red stripes, while Cristoforetti is wearing a Russian suit with blue stripes. This will be the sixth spacewalk in Artemyev’s career, and the first for Cristoforetti. It will be the sixth spacewalk at the station in 2022 and the 251st spacewalk for space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.


Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog@space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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