Two Russian cosmonauts will venture out into the vacuum of space today, and you can watch it live.
Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos will begin a spacewalk, or extra-vehicular activity (EVA), outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday (Dec. 19) beginning at 10:10 ET (1310 GMT). The spacewalk is expected to last six-and-a-half hours as the two Expedition 72 crewmates install a new instrument that will measure cosmic X-ray sources as well as new electrical equipment, according to NASA.
You can watch the entire spacewalk here, courtesy of NASA. Coverage begins at 9:45 ET (1445 GMT).
In addition to installing new equipment, Ovchinin and Vagner will remove several older science experiments from the outside of the station. During the spacewalk, Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov will operate the European Robotic Arm (ERA) from inside the space station while Ovchinin and Vagner relocate a control panel for the arm.
This will be the second spacewalk for Ovchinin, who will be wearing red stripes on his Orlan space suit. Ovchinin previously performed an EVA in 2019, during which the cosmonaut wished a happy birthday to Alexei Leonov, the Soviet cosmonaut who became the first person to ever spacewalk in 1965.
Vagner will be in blue stripes and will be venturing out into space for the first time.
Today’s EVA will mark the 272nd spacewalk to be performed on the ISS. The orbital laboratory is approaching the end of its life and is expected to be brought down to a fiery death through Earth’s atmosphere with the help of a specially-designed SpaceX Dragon deorbit vehicle sometime around 2023.
