NASA Television will broadcast live coverage of a 5.5-hour spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station beginning at 7:30 a.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 3.
Expedition 46 Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos will don their spacesuits and exit the station’s Pirs airlock at approximately 8:10 a.m. Their objectives are to deploy and retrieve several experiment packages on the Zvezda and Poisk modules and install devices called gap spanners, which will be placed on the hull of the station to facilitate the movement of crew members on future spacewalks.
Malenchenko and Volkov also will install the Vinoslivost experiment, which will test the effects of the space environment on various structural material samples, and test a device called the Restavratsiya experiment, which could be used to glue special coatings to external surfaces of the station’s Russian segment.
The pair will retrieve the EXPOSE-R Experiment, a collection of biological and biochemical samples placed in the harsh environment of space. The EXPOSE program is part of ESA’s (European Space Agency) research into astrobiology, or the study of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe.
The spacewalk will be the 193rd in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the sixth spacewalk for Malenchenko and the fourth spacewalk for Volkov. Malenchenko will be designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1) and Volkov will be extravehicular crew member 2 (EV2). Both will wear Russian Orlan spacesuits bearing blue stripes.
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