Flight director John Curry said during a recent media briefing that between the way the space station is oriented in the sky and the timing of the orbit in relation to NASA's tracking and communication spacecraft, he thinks there will be plenty of good, live television of the spacewalk.

While the pair is outside, NASA TV viewers will be able to tell the difference between the two by looking at what color stripes are on the spacesuits. Cosmonaut Korzun's will be blue while astronaut Whitson's will be red.

The first order of business, and the job that likely will take the most time, is to install six micrometeoroid debris shield panels onto one end of the Russian Zvezda service module, near where Zvezda is docked to the Russian-built Zarya module.

The debris panels are six of 23 that eventually will be installed in this area of the station to offer increased protection against the possibility that tiny dust particles might strike and penetrate the outpost's hull.

Bundled up into a neat package, the panels were carried into orbit by shuttle Endeavour during its June mission to the ISS and temporarily stowed by a pair of spacewalkers in a portable foot restraint latched onto the Pressurized Mating Adapter that connects the U.S. Unity node with the Russian Zarya module.

In order to transfer the panels from the stowage location to where they must be installed, Whitson must ride at the end of a 50-foot-long (15-meter-long) Russian crane called the Strela boom, which will be operated from a work station outside the Pirs airlock by Korzun.

With Whitson connected at the end, Korzun will swing her out back and forth between the two sites to move the panels over -- an operation that will seem to Whitson like she is being suspended at the end of a cherry-picker crane out over the edge of the Grand Canyon.

"We're very glad Peggy is not afraid of heights," said Cindy Begley, a NASA spacewalk manager who will be keeping an eye on this seventh extravehicular activity staged by the Russians at the ISS.

Korzun and Whitson will attach the panels by turning several bolts, something they practiced underwater in the Hydrolab at Star City outside of Moscow.

The next task will be to swap out a small metal plate called a Kromka that helps measure residue that has settled on the station's skin from a nearby steering thruster.

This is the second time a Kromka plate will be replaced at this spot. After the first one was removed in January, spacewalkers Yuri Onufrienko and Dan Bursch installed a deflectors by the thruster to see if that would help prevent the rocket exhaust from accumulating on the station's surface.

This second Kromka will provide initial results for that experiment.

The final task is similar in intention in that Korzun and Whitson will go to another thruster and inspect the station's skin for signs of thruster residue.

There is no Kromka or "witness plate" next to this thruster so the station crew will use two oversized "Q-tips" they made using a pair of rods with used t-shirts tied to the ends. One is light colored and the other is dark. They will swab the area, take some photos and then throw the "Q-tips" away into space.

Engineers are trying to determine how easy it is for this residue to rub off and accidentally contaminate a spacewalker's spacesuit.

Friday's spacewalk is the first of two planned during the Expedition Five mission. The second is planned for Friday, Aug. 23. On that spacewalk, Korzun will be joined by Sergei Treschev. Together they will spend about six hours outside installing additional equipment, including some amateur radio antennas.