14 DAY TRIAL // Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will carry out an extravehicular activity (EVA) today. The goal of the maneuver is to install a series of new instruments on the outer hull of the flying laboratory.
The spacewalk will be carried out by cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutyaev, who are both members of the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos). There are currently three cosmonauts on the ISS, including Expedition 28 Commander Andrei Borisenko.
NASA astronauts Ron Garan and Mike Fossum and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa make up the rest of the ISS crew. The new EVA is conducted exclusively by and for RosCosmos.
It will begin at around 10:30 am EDT (1430 GMT), when the two cosmonauts will exit the station through the Pirs airlock. Their main job will be to install an experimental, laser-based communications system, and also to release an amateur ham radio satellite into orbit.
The small spacecraft, weighing only 57 pounds, is shaped like a box, and is known as ARISSat-1 or Radioskaf-V. Rather than conducting actual science, its role is to boost interest in STEM careers among Russian students, which is why it was entirely built by amateurs.
This is the first of a series of small educational satellites that RosCosmos plans to deploy using the ISS as a platform. The agency is working with NASA, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT) and the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) for this job.
ISS Mission Control estimates that the tasks at hand will require about 6 hours to complete. Both spacewalkers will use Russian-built Orlan-MK suits, Space reports. ARISSat-1 will be released into orbit at around 11:07 am EDT (1507 GMT).
Then they will move to attaching the new communications system to the ISS. Its laser capabilities will allow Russian Mission Control to communicate with the Russian science experiments a lot faster and more reliably than ever before.
A work platform outside the Russian Zvezda service module has been identified as the best candidate for an install location. While in this region of the football field-sized ISS, the cosmonauts will also snap a series of pictures of a communications antenna that is not functioning properly.
This will be the last Russian spacewalk for this year. RosCosmos has tentatively scheduled the next EVA for February 2012.