Station dwarfs Dmitry Kondratyev, left, and Oleg Skripochka as they install video camera. Photo Credit/NASA TV
Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Kondratyev and Oleg Skripochka breezed through a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, installing a communications antenna and video camera as well as collecting external science experiments.
The work outside the station’s Russian segment went so well the cosmonauts finished their scheduled six hour excursion more than a half hour early.
The spacewalkers equipped an experimental transmitter outside the main crew dormitory with an antenna that permits high data rate transmissions to Earth.
The men used a special cutting tool to cut away insulation and link communication cables. As they completed the task, they tossed an antenna cover and a cable reel overboard. NASA’s Mission Control said the newest pieces of orbital debris would not pose a collision threat to Japan’s Kounotori HTV unmanned cargo capsule. Kounotori was scheduled to start a five-day journey to the station with a weather delayed lift off from the Tanegashima Space Center on Saturday.
The cosmonauts collected a failed experiment that was designed to measure fluctuations in the Earth’s ionosphere and a materials exposure experiment.. The joint European and Russia experiment exposed a wide range of high tech materials to the rigors of space to determine how they will fare in the fabrication of future spacecraft.
The final task for Kondratyev and Skripochka was the installation of a video camera on the Rassvet Mini Research Module. Rassvet was s delivered to the station aboard the shuttle Atlantis in May. The camera will assist with future Soyuz and Progress docking activities.