NASA: Another spacewalk planned for the International Space Station

Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - 13:24 Staff Reports

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy, Expedition 38 flight engineer, participates in a spacewalk in support of assembly and maintenance on the International Space Station.

Another spacewalk is planned at the International Space Station to complete a job left undone when technical issues hampered Russian cosmonauts working on the station in December.

     Two days after Christmas, two Russian cosmonauts conducted an eight-hour, seven-minute spacewalk attempting to install cameras on the exterior of the station. When the flight control team at the Russian Mission Control Center outside Moscow did not see the expected telemetry and electrical connectivity from the medium- and high- resolution cameras, the cosmonauts were directed to remove the cameras and return them to the airlock for further analysis, according to NASA.
     During a press conference Jan. 7, Dan Hartman, manager of operations and integration for the space station, said another spacewalk could occur at the end of January, possibly the 27th. “We’re in discussions with them [the Russians] as far as carrying out a second EVA [extra-vehicular activity] to put those back in place,” he said.
     American astronauts also conducted a spacewalk in December after the space station experienced issues with an external pump. While that issue was resolved with installation of new equipment, the old pump is still on the exterior of the station. At some point, that pump will be relocated.
     "In the meantime," Hartman said, "our engineers will figure out a way to potentially treat that old pump as a future spare."