The European robotic arm has been activated on the International Space Station

The European robotic arm installed on the International Space Station has been successfully activated as Russian cosmonauts make another spacewalk.

Oleg Artemiev Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev, astronauts of the Russian Space Agency, completed their half-finished work outside the International Space Station on Friday (Saturday, Iran time) with a new spacewalk.

This spacewalk is actually considered a complement to the previous one, which was stopped about 4 hours early on August 17 (26 August) after detecting a problem in the battery of Artymov's spacesuit.

According to the plan, robotic arm was tested to move and handle the cargo. The "European robotic Arm" or "ERA" is now fully activated and equipped for continuous use. , it will have the suffix a, b, and... and thus Friday's extrastation activity was named VKD-54a. This operation also marked Artemiv's eighth spacewalk and Matayev's fourth spacewalk.

The two cosmonauts completed this operation wearing Russian Orlan-MKS spacesuits at 13:25 local time. Eastern (21:55 Tehran time) on September 2 (11 Shahrivar) and then they started opening the "Poisk" module.

Russian cosmonauts on spacewalk 253
Credit: NASA

After leaving the airlock and moving towards "Nauka" (Nauka) module of the cargo adapter platform was installed and then the manual control panel of the robotic arm (EMMI) was moved to the front part of the Nauka module. With this controller, astronauts will have the ability to control the robotic arm during extra-station activities. This control panel had to be mounted on a railing and connected with a cable to the BLT3 base point of the station.

Testing the controller, adjusting both clamps at the end of the robotic arm, and finally releasing the restraint ring, is another part of the astronauts' activities. Was. In this way, the European robotic arm was put into operation and the test went according to plan.

The astronauts also installed a set of soft fences in the wall of the Naoka module. With enough time, the canopy of "Strela" was also opened so that the path for moving the air lock and radiator of the Nauka module was ready in the next spacewalk.

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Before returning, the astronauts were supposed to leave a set of restraint rings and launch time covers in space, which due to concerns about At the risk of orbital debris, it was canceled and temporarily strapped to the canvas of Estrella to be discarded on the next spacewalk. 05:42 Tehran time) and thus lasted a total of 7 hours and 47 minutes.

These two recent spacewalks are part of several operations required to activate the Naoka module and the European robotic arm. . The time of Russia's next spacewalk (VKD-55) has not yet been determined.

Cover photo: Russian astronauts on VKD-54a spacewalk
Credit: NASA

Source: NASA SpaceFlight