Digital News Report- NASA has announced that they plan on holding a media briefing on Dec. 18 to discuss an upcoming International Space Station spacewalk that will take place on Dec. 22. NASA Television will cover the spacewalk live. Expedition 18 will feature Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov. The briefing from NASA’s Johnson Space Center will air live on NASA TV Dec. 18 at 1 p.m. CST.
During the spacewalk, Fincke and Lonchakov will deploy and retrieve several Russian experiments on the station’s exterior. They also will install a device to measure electromagnetic forces imparted on station hardware as the complex moves through low Earth orbit. Russian specialists believe electromagnetic interference may have contributed to past problems on the Soyuz spacecraft’s pyrotechnic bolts, which allow sections of the vehicle to separate properly during its return to Earth.
NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 22. The spacewalk will start at approximately 6:15 p.m. and last six hours. It will be the fifth spacewalk of Fincke’s career and the first for Lonchakov. Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Sandy Magnus will monitor the spacewalk from inside the station.
Update:
tion deputy program manager Kirk Shireman and Expedition 18 spacewalk flight director David Korth were assigned to explain the work. NASA Television planned live coverage of both the briefing and the spacewalk.
Fincke and Lonchakov were to leave the station through the Pirs docking compartment while wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits. Fincke had completed four previous spacewalks during Expedition 9 in 2004. Lonchakov, an experienced cosmonaut on his third spaceflight, had never conducted a spacewalk.
Sandra Magnus remained inside the station to support the operation. She had arrived aboard space shuttle Endeavour during the STS-126 mission in November and replaced Gregory Chamitoff as the expedition’s third crew member. Her job during the outing included monitoring systems, communications, and the progress of the two spacewalkers.
One of the central tasks involved installing a Langmuir probe near the Russian section of the station. The instrument was designed to measure electron density, electron temperature, and electrical potential in the plasma surrounding the orbiting complex. Engineers wanted better information about how the station’s electrical environment affected nearby hardware.
The investigation followed abnormal returns by Soyuz TMA-10 in October 2007 and Soyuz TMA-11 in April 2008. In both cases, the spacecraft entered a steeper ballistic descent after sections of the Soyuz failed to separate at the expected time. The TMA-11 capsule landed more than 400 kilometers from its planned site, and the crew experienced higher forces than during a normal controlled descent.
Russian specialists focused attention on pyrotechnic bolts used to separate the Soyuz descent module from other parts of the spacecraft. One theory suggested that electrical discharges or differences in voltage around the station could damage an igniter or change the material surrounding it. The new probe could not provide an immediate answer, but it could record conditions near docked Soyuz vehicles and help engineers test the theory.
According to CBS News reporting published by Spaceflight Now, the station’s large solar arrays affected the charged plasma around the complex. Engineers were studying whether changes in the station’s configuration could create electrical conditions linked to the bolt failures. NASA officials said Russian teams had developed a detailed list of possible causes and considered the plasma environment a leading possibility.
The spacewalk also included several research projects mounted outside the Russian modules. Fincke and Lonchakov planned to install the Russian Impulse experiment, which would study disturbances in the ionosphere and the plasma around the station. They also intended to retrieve a Biorisk experiment that had exposed biological material to space.
Another major payload was Expose-R, a joint European and Russian astrobiology project. The European Space Agency said the unit carried plant seeds, bacterial spores, fungi, ferns, and organic materials in three trays. Scientists planned to expose the samples to vacuum, ultraviolet radiation, cosmic rays, and repeated temperature changes for about a year and a half.
The research was designed to examine whether organisms or biological materials could survive outside Earth’s protective atmosphere. Some studies addressed the possibility that basic ingredients of life could endure travel through space. Others examined how radiation and vacuum altered living samples and organic compounds.
The spacewalk began at 12:51 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time on December 23, which was still the evening of December 22 in the United States.
Fincke and Lonchakov worked outside for five hours and 38 minutes, slightly less than planned. They installed the Langmuir probe, retrieved the Biorisk container, and placed the Impulse experiment on the Zvezda service module. They also handled maintenance work and photographed parts of the station’s exterior.
The Expose-R installation did not succeed during that outing. The crew attached the payload, but controllers could not confirm that it had activated correctly. The spacewalkers removed it and brought it back inside for inspection rather than leaving an experiment outside without reliable power or data connections.
The Associated Press reported that the outing also included work related to Russian station equipment and maintenance. The event was the fifth spacewalk of Fincke’s career and the first for Lonchakov. It was also the 119th spacewalk devoted to International Space Station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998.
Expose-R received another opportunity less than three months later.
On March 10, 2009, Fincke and Lonchakov returned outside during a four-hour, 49-minute spacewalk. They successfully installed Expose-R on the exterior of Zvezda and completed additional photography and maintenance. Officials later confirmed that the biological samples had begun their long exposure to the space environment.
The December outing took place during a period of rapid growth for the station. Expedition 18 was helping prepare the complex to support a permanent crew of six instead of three. Shuttle missions delivered additional sleeping areas, exercise equipment, water systems, and other hardware needed for the larger crew.
Expedition 18 began when Fincke and Lonchakov launched aboard Soyuz TMA-13 on October 12, 2008. They docked with the station two days later. The expedition continued until April 2009 and included scientific work involving human health, fire suppression, air monitoring, materials, and new solar-cell technology.
The December spacewalk showed how station operations often combined science, maintenance, and risk reduction in a single mission. A probe installed near an airlock could help engineers understand a serious Soyuz concern, while nearby experiments tested biology and physics in open space. The work also demonstrated the close coordination required among NASA, Russian flight controllers, European researchers, and the crew aboard the station. It also preserved a record of the station’s electrical environment during a phase of orbital construction.