Cosmonauts Anton Shkáplerov and Piotr Dubrov today began a spacewalk that will last more than six hours to integrate the Prichal module into the Russian segment of the International Space Station (IS), according to images transmitted live by the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The hatch of the Poisk module opened at 12:18 GMT, eighteen minutes behind the mission schedule.
Minutes later, following fixing the hatch, Dubrov was the first to go out into outer space.
The Russian cosmonauts will have to carry out several tasks aimed at increasing the integration of the new module to the Russian segment, which include the installation of a Kurs-P approach passive antenna, installing a new video camera and its connection or mounting the necessary targets for the coupler
In addition, they must install the necessary handrails to move between the Naúka and Prichal modules during future spacewalks.
Should additional time be available, Shkaplerov and Dubrov might remove the Kurs-NA active approach antenna from the Prichal.
The Prichal, which was attached to the Russian segment of the ISS on November 26, is a module with a mass of 3.8 tons and has five docking ports, in addition to the one that connects it to the orbital platform.
This walk is Shkaplerov’s third and Dubrov’s fourth.
In total, Russian cosmonauts have carried out 155 missions of this type since the first spacewalk in history, carried out by the Soviet Alexei Leonov in March 1965, who was in open space for 12 minutes and nine seconds.
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