NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Busy Week of Spacewalk Preparations For Crew

Image above: Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Greg Chamitoff reconfigure power cables on a spacesuit aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

Spacewalk training activities and preparations continue for the Expedition 17 crew members aboard the International Space Station.

The three crew members participated in meetings with specialists on Earth and conducted reviews and checks of the systems and procedures that will be used during upcoming spacewalks.

Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko are scheduled to embark on the first of two spacewalks July 10.

During that spacewalk, the cosmonauts will inspect their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft, checking the attachment of the return module to the propulsion module. They also will retrieve a suspect pyrotechnic bolt for inspection by engineers on the ground.

Volkov and Kononenko are scheduled to conduct a second spacewalk on July 15. During that excursion, they will install experiments and attach rendezvous equipment to the hull of the Zvezda service module.

Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff reviewed procedures that would be employed in the unlikely event that the Pirs docking compartment airlock fails to repressurize after either of the spacewalks.

The crew members took a break from their activities to participate in an interview with KGPE-TV in Fresno, Calif.

The crew members also completed a variety of station maintenance tasks and performed their daily physical exercise routines to counteract the effects of long-term exposure to weightlessness in space.

+ Read more about Expedition 17
+ View crew timelines

---

International Space Station Calendar

Find out when the U.S. launched its first satellite and other historical tidbits with photos that highlight 50 years of NASA milestones and a decade of space station assembly.

+ Download calendar (8.6 Mb PDF)