On Friday (September 2), the two astronauts were back in action, more than making up for the aborted spacewalk two weeks ago.
Expedition 67 commander Oleg Artemyev and flight engineer Denis Matveev easily completed their spacewalk task in 7 hours and 47 minutes. International Space Station spacewalk starting at 9:25 a.m. (1325 GMT).
“You’ve accomplished more than you set out to do! Very productive,” a representative from Moscow’s Mission Control told the cosmonauts immediately after closing the hatch. (The broadcast was in Russian; translation was in English on NASA Television.)
Working one hour, 10 minutes ahead of schedule, Artemyev and Matveev completed multiple tasks to configure the European Robotic Arm and the advanced task of extending the long Strela boom crane between the Poisk and FGB modules of the orbital complex. Russian side.
“These booms have a lot of inertia,” commented one spacewalker at mid-elongation.
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Artemyev and Matveev obliged return to the airlock Orlan after 17 in early August spacesuits had a battery problem. (NASA did not say how Roscosmos evaluated the issue or decided to continue the spacewalks; this time the spacesuits had no power problems.)
He quickly completed the remaining tasks on today’s excursion, including installing the work platform on the Nauka module, configuring the control panel and arm grab “end effector”, and maneuvering some insulation between locations, among other tasks.
In addition to the extension of the boom, the main goal during the spacewalk was met when the spacewalkers successfully tested a mechanism designed to help the arm hold more than nine tons of cargo in space.
The astronauts also had a few minutes to look around the Earth, including witnessing the devastating wildfires and smoke over California. “You can see those wildfires. It’s impressive,” one spacewalker commented shortly before 11:20 a.m. EDT (1520 GMT), during the second hour of extravehicular travel.
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In his previous excursions in August. The 17, 2.5-hour duet did enough for European watchdogs to make the first move up their sleeves in August. 24.
“This first move consisted of releasing the payload from Nauka – the single-pin latch and its adapter for the astronaut support tool – to the other side of the module and then returning it to its original position,” ESA officials said. reported (opens in new tab). (Nauka is a Russian module whose arm will launch into space in July 2021.)
The arm carried a payload the size of a small suitcase during testing, but when fully operational, it will be able to lift loads weighing around 9 tonnes. Controllers are planning a more ambitious arm test in mid-September to assess brakes, joint movements, power control and camera image quality.
Friday’s spacewalk was Artemyev’s eighth and Matveyev’s fourth, NASA said. It was also the eighth on the ISS in 2022, and the 253rd to support its assembly and maintenance since 1998. previous space walks.
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