Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos are scheduled to begin their spacewalk at 11 am EST, NASA said.
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Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev during a spacewalk that
lasted 7 hours 46 minutes.
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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 boostercarrying 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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