HOUSTON—Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin conducted a nearly 8-hr. overnight spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) in which they moved an almost 1,100-lb. radiator from the seven-person orbital lab’s Russian segment Rassvet module to the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module.
The activities they completed at 5:35 a.m. EDT on April 19 had been scheduled to begin Dec. 14. That work was halted due to a sudden external coolant leak on the Soyuz MS-22 crew transport capsule that lofted the cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the ISS on Sept. 21. Plans for a Nov. 25 spacewalk were called off due to a problem with the water coolant circulation pumps in the Russian Orlan spacesuits worn by Prokopyev and Petelin.
“Great job, guys,” Russia’s Mission Control told the cosmonauts with an English translation after they re-entered the ISS Russian segment Poisk airlock. “You’ve done everything we planned.”
The damaged Soyuz MS-22 was replaced with the launch of the uncrewed MS-23 in February. The mission by Prokopyev—the ISS current Expedition 69 commander—Petelin and Rubio has been extended from the original conclusion in March to late September because of the coolant leak and Soyuz crew transport replacement.
During the first in what are to be a series of three spacewalks, Prokopyev and Petelin transferred a heat-rejecting radiator from the Rassvet docking module to the exterior of Nauka. Rassvet—along with the radiator and an experimental airlock that is to be transferred to Nauka during an April 25 spacewalk by the cosmonauts—was launched to the ISS aboard NASA’s STS-132 space shuttle mission in May 2010.
Russia launched the Nauka—which includes a scientific research volume, a docking port and airlock for spacewalks—to the ISS in July 2021.
Planned for May 4, the last in the series of three Russian spacewalks will focus on deploying and activating the radiator that was transferred to the Nauka.
Prokopyev and Petelin finished the first spacewalk by aligning the radiator to its connector on Nauka and making mechanical and electrical and hydraulic utility hookups.
As they will be during the April 25 and May 4 spacewalks, Prokopyev and Petelin were assisted in moving the rectangular radiator by the European Space Agency robot arm that was launched as part of Nauka. Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev commanded the multi-jointed, 36-ft.-long robot arm from inside the ISS.
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