Two Russian cosmonauts will venture outside the International Space Station today (Aug. 10) in a spacewalk to install equipment, pick up an experiment and take pictures of the station.
Expedition 44 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Mikhail Kornienko are expected to exit the Russian Pirs airlock at 10:14 a.m. EDT (1414 GMT). You can watch the spacewalk live online beginning at 9:45 a.m. EDT (1345 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV.
The cosmonauts' primary task will be to install gap spanners on the station's hull, which makes it easier for spacewalkers to move around while doing their work. The veteran spacewalkers will also clean the Zvezda service module's windows, put fasteners on exterior communication antennas, replace an old rendezvous and docking antenna, and take pictures of the station exterior.
Kornienko is five months into a one-year mission on the space station, along with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. The goal of the mission – twice as long as a typical space station stay – is to see how the human body reacts to extended periods in microgravity. Only a few people have stayed in space for a year or longer; they were all Russian cosmonauts aboard space station Mir in the 1990s.
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