MOSCOW. Jan 21 (Interfax-AVN) - International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers Dmitry Kondratyev and Oleg Skripochka will conduct a spacewalk on Friday to dismantle scientific equipment and to install a video camera, a spokesman for Russia's Mission Control Center, located outside Moscow, told Interfax-AVN.
"The cosmonauts dressed in "computerized" Orlan-MK spacesuits will exit the station using the Russian Pirs module. The spacewalk is due to start at 5:20 p.m. Moscow time. It will continue for 5 hours and 57 minutes," the spokesman said.
It will be the first spacewalk in Kondratyev's career as a cosmonaut, Skripochka's second, and the 33rd from the Russian segment of the orbiting outpost, he said.
During the operation, the ISS crewmembers will install a high-speed data transmission device on the outer surface of Russia's Zvezda service module, from where they will remove and return to the station European scientific equipment with organic and biological samples and an impulse plasma injector, which is no longer working.
Kondratyev and Skripochka will also install a video camera on the Rassvet service module that will enable the ISS crew to watch the docking of Soyuz TMA manned spacecraft with the station.
In November 2010, the vacuum-shield thermal insulation covering the module's surface prevented Skripochka and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin from installing a video camera there.
This time the crewmembers will remove part of the insulation using a specially designed knife.
Safety measures to be taken during the upcoming spacewalk include the presence of crewmembers Alexander Kaleri and Scott Kelly inside the Poisk module docked with the Soyuz TMA-M spaceship, while astronauts Catherine Coleman and Paolo Nespoli will stay inside the station's U.S. service module, which has access to the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft docked with the Rassvet module.