Two Cosmonauts Exit Station and Begin Spacewalk

Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov are pictured during a spacewalk in 2014 outside the space station's Russian segment.
Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov are pictured during a spacewalk in 2014 outside the space station’s Russian segment.

Expedition 67 Flight Engineers Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev of Roscosmos began Russian spacewalk 52 at 11:01 a.m. EDT to activate a new robotic arm attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module at the International Space Station by opening the hatch of the Poisk docking compartment airlock.

Artemyev is wearing a Russian Orlan spacesuit with red stripes. Matveev will wear a spacesuit with blue stripes. This is the fourth spacewalk in Artemyev’s career, and the first for Matveev. It will be the fourth spacewalk at the station in 2022 and the 249th spacewalk for space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

Coverage of the spacewalk continues on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

The duo’s primary tasks for today’s spacewalk are to install and connect a control panel for the European robotic arm, a 37-foot-long manipulator system mounted to the recently arrived Nauka. They will also remove protective covers from the arm and install handrails on Nauka. The arm will be used to move spacewalkers and payloads around the Russian segment of the station.


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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