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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – Two Russian astronauts from the International Space Station set out on a spacewalk on Wednesday to prepare for the arrival of a long-delayed laboratory next year.
Commander Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov – nicknamed Sergey 1 and Sergey 2 by air traffic controllers – left four Americans and one Japanese inside. The space station’s population grew to seven late Monday with the arrival of a SpaceX capsule, which made the company’s second astronaut flight.
Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov, on their first spacewalk, spent nearly two hours doing further leak checks before exiting an inner tube. The compartment has been in the space station since 2009 but was first used by space walkers.
“Congratulations. You’re out,” Russian Mission Control radioed from near Moscow.
The old Russian spacewalk compartment will be removed and demolished next year to make room for the Nauka research laboratory – Russian for “science”. Several Russian-led spacewalks will be needed to tackle all of this. The plan is to attach a cargo ship to the old Pirs module to guide it towards a fiery reentry.
The new 22-ton laboratory – 43 feet long – is so large that it will be launched from Kazakhstan by a powerful Proton rocket. Once it reaches the orbiting outpost, it will act as a lockout chamber and docking port.
The launch of the science lab – almost a decade late due to a long series of repairs – is expected early next year.
Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov arrived last month with an American in a Soyuz capsule. Like the newly arrived SpaceX crew, astronauts launched from Russia will remain aboard until spring.
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