NASA Television Airs Space Station Spacewalk Today

NASA Television will provide live coverage when two members of the Expedition 36 crew venture outside the International Space Station today, June 24. The pair will conduct a six-hour spacewalk in preparation for the addition of a new Russian module later this year.

NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk by Russian flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin will begin at 9 a.m. EDT. Yurchikhin and Misurkin will begin the spacewalk about 9:35 a.m. when they open the hatch to the space station's Pirs docking compartment and float outside.

They will replace a fluid flow control panel on the station's Zarya module and install clamps for future power cables as an early step toward swapping the Pirs airlock with a new multipurpose laboratory module. The Russian Federal Space Agency plans to launch a combination research facility, airlock and docking port late this year on a Proton rocket.

Yurchikhin and Misurkin also will retrieve several science experiments on the outside of the Zvezda service module.

The spacewalk will be the 169th in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the sixth for Yurchikhin and the first for Misurkin. Yurchikhin will wear an Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes while Misurkin will wear a suit with blue stripes. Both spacewalkers will be equipped with NASA helmet cameras to provide close-up views of their work.

This is the second of up to six Russian spacewalks planned for this year. Two U.S. spacewalks by NASA's Chris Cassidy and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency are scheduled in July.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the International Space Station and its crew, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA

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