Cosmonauts Prokopiev and Petelin completed an eight-hour spacewalk

Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin successfully completed their work in open space, having spent 7 hours 55 minutes outside the International Space Station (ISS), informed Roskosmos.

In the course of the work, the astronauts prepared the radiator for transfer on the module of the Rassvet station, then transferred it using the ERA manipulator and docked to the Nauka module, and also installed the Anchor platform to fix the legs during the exit.

The planned duration of the work was, as previously reported, 6 hours 37 minutes. The spacewalk was the first in 2023.

The Russian Prokopiev and Petelin were originally supposed to carry out these works back in November 2022, but then the spacewalk broke due to the detected abnormal operation of pumps in the cooling system of one of the spacesuits. The work was postponed to December, but even then the exit did not take place for technical reasons.

The Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-22, carrying Russians Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio, arrived at the ISS in September 2022. In October, a female cosmonaut arrived at the station on the Crew Dragon-5 spacecraft Roscosmos” Anna Kikina. In March 2023 on the ISS arrived the Crew Dragon spacecraft with Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and UAE astronaut Sultan Al-Neyadi. After the Crew-6 mission in the second half of 2023, NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara will go to the ISS on the Soyuz MS-24.