The ISS will host its third and final spacewalk of 2024 on Thursday, December 19.
Expedition 72 crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner will work on installing an experiment package designed to monitor celestial x-ray sources, as well as new electrical connector patch panels, NASA said on its website. They’ll also remove several experiments in preparation for disposal.
The two Russian cosmonauts will also relocate a control panel for the European robotic arm, which is attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. A third Roscosmos cosmonaut, Alexsandr Gorbunov, will operate the arm during the spacewalk from inside the station.
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This will be the second spacewalk for Ovchinin and the first for Vagner. For identification purposes, Ovchinin’s spacesuit will include red stripes, while Vagner’s will have blue stripes. This will be the 272nd spacewalk in support of space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades, NASA said.
It’s been a quiet year for spacewalks at the ISS. At least 12 took place each year from 2021 to 2023, but in June, NASA suspended its spacewalk program after water leaked from the service and cooling umbilical unit on a spacesuit worn by NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson a short while after the station’s hatch was opened at the beginning of a scheduled walk. During the suspension, engineers investigated the issue and created a fix that involved replacing a seal and the umbilical connection connecting the spacesuit to the ISS. The compromised suit was successfully repressurized, though additional testing was also carried out to ensure that the suit design was reliable and safe.
Although Russian cosmonauts use different spacesuits, the Roscosmos space agency also halted its spacewalk program at the same time, seemingly as a precautionary measure to give officials and cosmonauts an opportunity to thoroughly check of all of their spacewalk equipment.
How to watch
NASA will provide live coverage of the two Roscosmos cosmonauts conducting their spacewalk outside of the ISS on Thursday, December 19.
NASA’s live coverage will start at 9:45 a.m. ET and you can watch it on NASA+. The spacewalk itself is expected to begin at about 10:10 a.m. ET and will last around six and a half hours.