Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin opened the airlock hatch on the Poisk module at 1547 GMT on 12 May. This was the third in a series of three planned spacewalks for the cosmonauts. This mission objective was to deploy a radiator on the International Space Station’s (ISS) Nauka science module. The radiator and an experiment airlock (fitted on last EVA) was launched with the Rassvet mini-research module aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-132/ULF 4/ATLANTIS) 14 May 2010. After removing the remaining restraints holding the radiator closed, the bolts were removed and the radiator unfolded to its full length. The cosmonauts then began opening the first set of valves to fill the radiator with coolant fluid. With this lengthy process underway (expected to take 2 hours) Prokopyev and Petelin installed two gap spanners on to the European Robotic Arm (ERA). Ahead of schedule, the cosmonauts then installed a pair of handrails connecting the Nauka laboratory to the Prichal docking node. Prokopyev and Petelin then opened the second set of valves to complete the coolant loading for the radiator. After cleaning up and jettisoning the towels used for wiping the radiator down, the cosmonauts returned to the airlock with the hatch closing at 2101 GMT. The EVA took 5 hours and 14 minutes.
Prokopyev (top) and Petelin deploy radiator.
Expedition 69 Commander Sergey Prokopyev has now completed his sixth EVA’s with Flight Engineer Dmitry Petelin recording his fourth spacewalk. Prokopyev has now spent 42 hours 16 minutes and Petelin 26 hours and 45 minutes outside the space station. This was the sixth EVA for the year and 263rd spacewalk dedicated to assembly, maintenance and upgrade of the ISS.
