Cosmonauts Complete Dress Rehearsal For Spacewalk Monday

Two cosmonauts cruised through a dress rehearsal today for the 25th Russian spacewalk at the International Space Station since construction of the outpost began in late 1998.

Working inside the Russian Pirs airlock, flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko donned the protective Orlan spacesuits they will wear during the planned six-hour outing, which is slated to begin at 11:45 p.m. Monday. You can watch live NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk right here in The Flame Trench. Click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer for live coverage beginning at 11 p.m. Monday.

The two cosmonauts reviewed plans for the excursion, which is primarily aimed electrically linking the newly delivered Rassvet Mini-Research Module to the rest of the Russian side of the station. Yurchikhin and Kornienko will route command and data handling cables, as well as Ethernet cables, from Rassvet to the Russian Zvezda and Zarya modules.

The Rassvet module was delivered in May by a visiting shuttle crew.

Yurchikhin and Kornienko also will replace a faulty camera required for docking robotic European ATV cargo carriers, one of which is due to arrive at the outpost in December. Located on the aft end of the Russian Zvezda module, the broken camera will be tossed overboard.

The spacewalk will be the 147th conducted during the assembly and maintenance of the $100 billion station, a joint project of the U.S., Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. Total time tallied during the 146 previous excursions: 914 hours and 53 minutes.