Two astronauts returned to action Friday (Sept. 2), making up for a spacewalk that was cut short two weeks ago.
Expedition 67 Commander Oleg Artemiev and Flight Engineer Denis Matveev easily exceeded their allotted space mission in 7 hours, 47 minutes. International Space Station The spacewalk began at 9:25 a.m. EDT (1325 GMT).
“You’ve done more than you thought you could! Very useful,” a representative from Moscow Mission Control told the astronauts as they closed the hatch. (The broadcast was in Russian; commentary was available in English on NASA TV.)
Working one hour, 10 minutes early, Artemiev and Matveev completed several tasks to build the European robotic arm and extend the long Strela boom crane between the Boysk and FGB modules of the orbital complex. Russian side.
“These ascents have a lot of inertia,” one of the spacewalkers commented on the mid-extension.
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Artemiev and Matveev had to do Back to the airlock Early on August 17 after Orlan one Space suits Had a battery problem. (NASA has not disclosed how Roscosmos assessed the problem or decided to continue the spacewalk; the spacesuits have no power problems at this time.)
The rest of the work on today’s excursion was quick, including setting up a work platform on the Nauka block, configuring a control panel and hand-held “end effector”, and maneuvering some insulation between spaces, among other tasks.
A major spaceflight mission was accomplished when astronauts successfully tested a mechanism that would allow them to hand-hold more than nine tons of payloads in space, in addition to the boom extension.
Astronauts had a few glimpses of Earth, including seeing devastating wildfires and smoke in California. “You can see that forest fire. That’s interesting,” one of the spacewalkers commented shortly before 11:20 a.m. EDT (1520 GMT), during the second hour of extra-vehicular activity.
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On their previous outing on August 17, which lasted 2.5 hours, the duo did enough work for European regulators to make the first movement on the arm on August 24.
“This first maneuver involves unfastening the payload — a single pin latch and its adapter for the space support instrument — from Nauka, moving it to the other side of the module, and then reinstalling it in its original position,” European Space Agency officials said. Said (opens in new tab). (Navka is the Russian module that launched Kai into space in July 2021.)
During testing the arm moved a payload the size of a small suitcase, but when fully equipped it could carry payloads weighing nearly 9 tonnes. Controllers are planning a more ambitious hands-on test in mid-September to assess brakes, joint motion, force control and camera image quality.
Friday’s spacewalk was Artemyev’s eighth space mission and Matveev’s fourth, NASA said. It will be 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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