Two Russian cosmonauts completed a spacewalk at the International Space Station and more than completed all their tasks, including the radar deployment they started last year.
Expedition 71 crew members Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub successfully deployed and locked the fourth of four panels for a synthetic radar communications system on Russia’s Nauka multifunction laboratory module (MLM) on Thursday (April 25) at 11:44 a.m. EDT (1544 GMT). 47 minutes after the spacewalk began.
“I’ll try manually first,” Chub said, using his gloved hand to push open the bulky orange cloth-covered panel. “The bolts are closed.”
From his helmet-mounted camera, Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Chub uses his hands to manually deploy a bulky radar system panel during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on April 25, 2024. The work was quick but necessary to get the radar system online. The fourth panel did not unfold automatically when Kononenko and Chub first installed the unit during their previous spacewalk together on October 25, 2023.
The radar will be used to monitor the Earth’s environment. It was the first science payload mounted on Nauka following the module’s addition to the space station in July 2021.
With that solution complete, Kononenko and Chub moved on to other tasks outside the Russian part of the orbiting laboratory. The two spacewalkers turned toward a plume collision unit used to measure emissions of gases from the space station’s thrusters, swabbed nearby surfaces for later analysis and returned inside with a biological exposure experiment that will also continue studied.
Kononenko and Chub also moved and installed a storage platform for hardware adapters on the Poisk mini research module that will support spacewalk activities, including the installation of two devices to measure corrosion on the station’s exterior, which the two cosmonauts completed as their final task. day.
In an image from cosmonaut Nikolai Chub’s helmet-mounted camera, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko peers into the Poisk airlock during a spacewalk at the International Space Station on April 25, 2024. Kononenko and Chub reentered at 3:33 PM EDT (1933 GMT) and closed the hatch to the airlock on the Poisk module, marking an official end to their spacewalk after 4 hours and 36 minutes. The excursion was expected to last more than seven hours, but the cosmonauts quickly completed all their activities and walked about two hours ahead of schedule.
“The EVA was shorter than we expected, but what can you do?” one of the cosmonauts radioed.
The spacewalk was the 270th in support of the assembly, maintenance and upgrades of the International Space Station and lasted a total of 71 days, 11 hours and 25 minutes. It was the seventh appearance for Kononenko, who has now spent 44 hours and 30 minutes on extravehicular activities (EVAs) over three decades.
Chub completed his second spacewalk, having now spent 12 hours and 17 minutes outside the International Space Station.
Source: https://johnnyrivera.us/fogg/e1cm39079P1d53/
