The next spacewalks of Russian cosmonauts will take place on April 20 and 28, as well as in May
Moscow. March 26. INTERFAX - Russian cosmonauts will conduct three spacewalks in April and May to integrate the European ERA manipulator into the Russian segment of the International Space Station, cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, who works on the ISS, said.
"The first spacewalk is scheduled for April 20. And immediately a week later - on April 28 - the next one, during which we will continue working with the ERA manipulator: we will remove the protective covers from it, install handrails and halyards, release the locking locks so that it can "walk"," Artemyev said in an interview with the Russian Cosmos magazine.
The third exit, according to him, is planned in May.
Artemyev noted that during the first spacewalk, the crew will be engaged in initialization and commissioning of the European ERA manipulator installed on the outer surface of the Nauka module. "The main task is to check the external remote control. We will have to take it out, install it, check the work," he said.
The cosmonaut said that one of the next exits during his expedition to the ISS, of which seven are planned, he will spend with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
"The other six are together with Denis Matveev. And Sergey Korsakov will be the operator at the station - the first person who will operate the ERA manipulator," the cosmonaut said.
On January 19, the head of the extravehicular activity Department of the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Alexander Poleshchuk, announced that work on integrating ERA into the ISS had been postponed due to technical problems with the manipulator.
Earlier, Roscosmos reported that spacewalks, during which the integration of the manipulator was supposed to take place, were supposed to take place on January 27 and February 2. Together with Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer could go into outer space.
On January 23, cosmonaut Dubrov announced that the work on integrating the European ERA manipulator into the ISS will be carried out by the next Russian crew together with a European astronaut.
The ERA autonomous relocatable manipulator manufactured by the German company Fokker Space is part of the standard electromechanical maintenance tools of the Nauka module. As the main manipulator of the Russian segment of the station, it will provide installation and removal of target loads on the surface of the station and monitoring of the condition of the outer surface of the station, as well as remotely controlled movement of astronauts on a portable workplace during spacewalks.
On February 24, the United States and the European Union announced the introduction of sanctions against the Russian space industry. In response to European sanctions, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced the termination of Soyuz rocket launches from the Kourou cosmodrome in French Guiana and the withdrawal of Russian specialists from there.
On March 17, the ruling council of the European Space Agency declared it impossible to continue cooperation with the Roscosmos State Corporation on the ExoMars-2022 mission. Rogozin, after ESA's refusal to cooperate on the ExoMars mission, said that the state corporation would be able to conduct a Mars mission on its own in a few years.
