Watch 2 cosmonauts conduct spacewalk outside the ISS today

News
By Mike Wall
published

The seven-hour excursion is scheduled to begin around 10:55 a.m. ET.

Two Russian cosmonauts will perform a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) today (April 25), and you can watch the action live.

Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub are scheduled to venture into the void at around 10:55 a.m. EDT today, then "spend about seven hours configuring hardware and installing experiments on the Roscosmos segment of the space station," NASA officials said in an update on Wednesday (April 24). (Roscosmos is Russia's space agency.)

You can watch it live here, courtesy of NASA; coverage will begin at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT).

Related: International Space Station: Everything you need to know about the orbital laboratory

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub work to inspect an external radiator on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module while conducting a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station on Oct. 25, 2023. (Image credit: NASA TV)

Today's excursion will be the second spacewalk for Chub and the seventh for Kononenko. The duo conducted an extravehicular activity together in October 2023, during which they inspected a leaky radiator on the outside of Russia's Nauka module.

Chub and Konenko launched to the ISS together back in September 2023, on a Soyuz spacecraft that also carried NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara. The liftoff kicked off the first spaceflight for Chub and O'Hara and the fifth for Kononenko.

Kononenko isn't just an off-Earth veteran; he's a record-breaker. The cosmonaut has spent more total time in space than anyone in history — 957 days as of today. 

RELATED STORIES:

— Cosmonauts on ISS spacewalk encounter coolant 'blob' while inspecting leaky radiator

— Spacewalks: How they work and major milestones

— International Space Station leaks coolant into space, but astronauts are not in danger

Today is shaping up to be a busy day in human spaceflight. China plans to launch the Shenzhou 18 astronaut mission to its Tiangong space station at 8:59 a.m. EDT (1259 GMT), for example. 

And NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are scheduled to arrive at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida today ahead of their planned May 6 launch to the ISS on the first-ever crewed flight of Boeing's new Starliner spacecraft. 

You can watch all of this action live here at Space.com. Coverage of Williams and Wilmore's KSC arrival will begin at 1 p.m. EDT (1500 GMT), in the middle of the Russian spacewalk. (NASA will air the KSC event on its main YouTube channel and switch the spacewalk to its media channel at that point.) 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.