A Russian cosmonaut accomplished the primary test flight at the top of a robotic arm as a part of a successful spacewalk on the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday (Aug. 9).
Expedition 69 commander Sergey Prokopyev rode at the top of the European Robotic Arm (ERA) to check the sturdiness and sturdiness of a conveyable workstation. The arm was added to the International Space Station with the Nauka multi-purpose science module in July 2021, however it didn’t enter service on the Russian segment until almost a yr later in April 2022.
Since then, the ERA has been used to relocate a big radiator and an experiment airlock, but this was the primary time that it was used with a human aboard.
Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, working at a panel inside Nauka, controlled the 37-foot-long (11.3 meters) robotic arm as Prokopyev went along for the slow and regular ride. Dmitry Petelin, who joined Prokopyev on the spacewalk, was positioned nearby to look at and photograph the test.
The demonstration, which lasted about 40 minutes, showed that the arm, equipped with the portable workstation, will be used to reposition cosmonauts on future spacewalks, matching certainly one of the capabilities of the station’s primary arm, the Canadarm2, that supports the U.S. operating segment.
Before today, and even throughout the spacewalk, crew members on EVAs (extravehicular activities) transferred between modules using operated by hand extendable “Strela” booms.
Along with testing the arm, Prokopyev and Petelin also installed debris shields to guard the areas on the Rassvet mini-research module where the relocated radiator and airlock had been.
They two cosmonauts accomplished the spacewalk by tossing overboard the protective shrouds and launch restraints that they faraway from the portable workstation earlier within the EVA, in addition to the towels they used to wipe down their spacesuits. The 2 jettisons was done with care such that the bundled packages had no likelihood of reencountering the station before the spent equipment falls back to Earth and is destroyed.
Prokopyev and Petelin then reentered the space station and closed the hatch. The 6 hour and 35 minute spacewalk began at 10:44 a.m. and ended at 5:19 p.m. EDT (1444 to 2119 GMT).
Wednesday’s outing was the sixtieth from a Russian airlock and the 267th overall EVA in support of the assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station since 1998. It was the tenth spacewalk conducted on the space station this yr and the eighth EVA during Expedition 69.
Prokopyev, who served as extravehicular officer-1 (EV-1), has now performed eight spacewalks totaling 55 hours and quarter-hour. Petelin, as EV-2, accomplished his sixth profession EVA, having now logged 39 hours and 44 minutes working within the vacuum of space.