Russian cosmonauts embark on first spacewalk in 2021
Moscow, Jun 2 (EFE).- Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitski and Pyotr Dubrov embarked Wednesday on this year’s first spacewalk to prepare the docking of a new International Space Station module, Nauka.
The walk started at 5:56 GMT this morning and is scheduled to last 6 hours and 50 minutes.
The cosmonauts opened the hatch of the Poisk small research module of the ISS 16 minutes later than planned.
Novitski and Dubrov’s tasks will include regular maintenance works, space experiments and preparations for the docking of Nauka, which means ‘science’ in Russian.
This is the third space walk to be performed by Russian cosmonauts. The previous one was conducted on November 18. The next are scheduled for September.
March 18 marked the 56th anniversary since the first spacewalk by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.
Russia’s Anatoly Solovyov holds the record of outer space trips with 16 spacewalks of a total duration of 82 hours.
The Nauka project began in 1995 and is designed for scientific work, cargo storage, docking of spacecraft and research modules, as well as fuel transfer between space devices.
The docking of Nauka with the orbital platform is expected on July 23.
Nauka will become the 17th module on the orbital platform and will allow cosmonauts to perform many tasks in outer space without having to leave the ISS. EFE
