Two Cosmonauts Wrap Up the Fourth Spacewalk at the Station This Year

ISS — Expedition 59 Mission patch /  Russian Cosmonaut patch.

May 29, 2019

Expedition 59 Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos have completed a spacewalk lasting 6 hours and 1 minute.

The two cosmonauts opened the hatch to the Pirs docking compartment to begin the spacewalk at 11:42 a.m. EDT. They re-entered the airlock and closed the hatch at 5:43 p.m.

Image above: Spacewalkers Oleg Kononenko and Alexey Ovchinin work outside the Pirs docking compartment during the fourth spacewalk of the year at the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA TV.

During the spacewalk, the duo completed the planned tasks, including installing a handrail on the Russian segment of the complex, retrieving science experiments from the Poisk module’s hull; removing and jettisoning the plasma wave experiment hardware; and conducting maintenance work on the orbiting laboratory, such as cleaning the window of the Poisk hatch.

The spacewalk was the 217th in support of station assembly, maintenance and upgrades and the fourth outside the station this year.

Image above: Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is pictured during a spacewalk in 2012 as an Expedition 30 crewmember with fellow spacewalker Anton Shkaplerov. Image Credit: NASA TV.

This was the fifth spacewalk in Kononenko’s career and the first for Ovchinin, who will become station commander next month. Kononenko is scheduled to return to Earth June 24, with crewmates Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, wrapping up a six-and-a-half-month mission living and working in space.

Related article:

Russian Spacewalkers Wish Happy Birthday to First Spacewalker Alexei Leonov
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/05/russian-spacewalkers-wish-happy.html

Related links:

Expedition 59: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition59/index.html

Pirs docking compartment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/pirs-docking-compartment

Poisk module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/poisk-mini-research-module-2

Spacewalk: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/spacewalks/

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

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