Two spacewalking assembly-and-maintenance men will venture outside the International Space Station late tonight to replace a broken European docking camera and rig up a newly delivered Russian research module.Flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko will perform the six-hour excursion. You can watch live NASA TV coverage of the outing right here in The Flame Trench starting at 11 p.m. Click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer for live coverage. Yurchikhin and Kornienko are scheduled to exit the Russian Pirs airlock at about 11:45 p.m.
The two cosmonauts aim to electrically link the 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. Ballistics experts say it will pose no threat to the station and will reenter Earth's atmosphere and burn up within about a year.
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.
1 comment:
America, get accustomed to seeing these kinds of headlines………you have thrown in the towel and conceded the leadership role in space. Just wait until you read “Middle East Leads New Endeavors in Space Exploration”, or “Russian Cosmonaut Takes First Steps on Martian Planet”, but don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch it all live from The Flame Trench after about two years of US funding of the Russian space program. Thanks for the new launch facility!!! GO RUSSIA!!! WE'RE NUMBER 1!!!!!
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