6-Hour Long Spacewalk For Russian Cosmonauts To Check On ISS-Docked Soyuz

Washington: Two Russian cosmonauts will go for a six-hour-long spacewalk tomorrow to check a hole in the external hull of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS).

Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos are scheduled to begin their spacewalk at 11 am EST, NASA said. 

While this will be the fourth spacewalk in Mr Kononenko's career, Mr Prokopyev will be out on his second. 

In late August, a pressure leak occurred on the space station that was traced to the Soyuz.

Within hours after finding the source of the leak, the Expedition 56 crew sealed the hole and the station has since maintained a steady pressure.

Now the cosmonauts will take samples of any residue found on the hull and take digital images of the area before placing a new thermal blanket over it. 

The samples and images will provide additional information that will aid the investigation into the cause of the pressure leak, NASA said. 

The spacewalk was initially planned for November 15 and Mr Prokopyev was set to perform it alongside Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, Sputnik news agency had reported.

However, the latter did not make it to the ISS due to a failure of the Soyuz-FG booster carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with Mr Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague on board in October, the report added.

The spacecraft that the cosmonauts will check tomorrow are scheduled to return Mr Prokopyev, NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Alexander Gerst from the space station to Earth on December 19 (US time).

The three will return home after a six-and-half-month mission.

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