Cosmonauts Set Up Robotic Arm’s First Motion, Wrap Up Spacewalk

Spacewalkers Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev monitor the station's new European robotic arm as it moves on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.
Spacewalkers Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev monitor the station’s new European robotic arm as it moves on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev of Roscosmos concluded their spacewalk outside of the International Space Station at  6:40 p.m. EDT after 7 hours and 42 minutes.

Artemyev and Matveev completed their major objectives during the spacewalk, which included monitoring the first commanded movements of the robotic arm from its grapple fixtures after removing thermal blankets and launch locks. The duo monitored the robotic arm as its end effectors translated one at a time to a new base points. The crew also installed more handrails on Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

Shortly after the spacewalk ended, cosmonaut Sergey Korsakov completed the grapple of the second of the two end effectors on the new European Robotic Arm to a grapple mechanism on the Nauka module to successfully wrap up the major tasks of the excursion.

This was the fifth spacewalk in Artemyev’s career, and the second for Matveev. It will be the fifth spacewalk at the station in 2022 and the 250th spacewalk for space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

Additional spacewalks are planned to continue outfitting the European robotic arm and to activate Nauka’s airlock for future spacewalks.


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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