Mon /April 18, 2022/ The ISS Expedition-67 Cosmonauts; Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev will exit the space station for the first time during the current expedition to the ISS (VKD No. 52), They will begin extravehicular activities by exiting the space-facing Poisk module of the station’s Russian segment.
This will be Oleg Artemyev's fourth extravehicular activity in his career, for Matveev - the first. The spacewalk is expected to last approximately 6 hours and 38 minutes. Artemyev will work in the Orlan-MKS spacesuit number 5 with red stripes, Matveev - in Orlan-MKS number 4 with blue stripes.
The Extravehicular activities VKD-52 and 53 will be carried out in accordance with the schedule, the main goal of the work will be the preparation of the European ERA manipulator for operation on the Russian segment of the ISS.
During the first spacewalk, the cosmonauts will install and connect a control panel for the European robotic arm, a 11.27m -long manipulator system mounted to the recently arrived Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.
Artemyev and Matveev will have to mount three handrails on the ERA, remove the covers of screen-vacuum thermal insulation in the elbow area of the manipulator and install a portable workstation adapter. During the work, the cosmonauts are scheduled to have four rest periods.
Watch the VKD-51 Live on NASA TV
In total, seven spacewalks are planned for the duration of the expedition of Artemyev, Matveev and his colleague Sergei Korsakov. Oleg Artemyev will perform one of the EVA with Italian Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (arriving on SpaceX Crew-4), the rest of the EVA's paired with Denis Matveev.
Roscosmos says; Sergei Korsakov has no extravehicular activity planned, despite this he is ready for such work. In addition, he was trained to work with the ERA manipulator.