October 5, 2001

Kirsten Larson
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-0243)

Eileen Hawley
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(Phone: 281/483-5111)

Release: N01-52

NASA TV to Cover Pirs Docking Compartment Spacewalk

NASA Television will provide coverage of the first of three spacewalks from the International Space Station on Monday, Oct. 8, beginning at 8:30 a.m. CDT.

During the first external spacewalk from the station without a Space Shuttle present, Expedition Three Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin will spend more than four hours outside the newly installed Pirs Docking Compartment. They will hook up data and telemetry cables between Pirs and the Zvezda Service Module and outfit Pirs with handrails, an access ladder, and a telescoping boom to help transport cargo around the Russian segment of the station.

During the spacewalk, Expedition Commander Frank Culbertson will monitor the progress of his colleagues and help choreograph their work. In addition, he'll provide television views of their activities from inside the orbiting outpost.

Dezhurov and Tyurin are scheduled to conduct a second spacewalk Oct. 15 to deploy scientific experiments on Zvezda, while Culbertson and Dezhurov plan to make a third spacewalk Nov. 5 to complete the outfitting of Pirs. The portal will serve as both a docking station for future Russian vehicles and as an airlock for Russian segment spacewalks.

NASA TV is available on GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85 degrees West longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 MHz, and audio of 6.8 MHz.

text-only version of this release