SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468
Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov will begin an almost six-hour spacewalk from the Pirs docking compartment airlock today at about 2:20 p.m. EDT to install Service Module Debris Protection (SMDP) panels on Zvezda and reroute a Global Positioning System antenna cable.
Additional SMDP panels will be installed on a second spacewalk by Yurchikhin and Kotov on June 6. During that spacewalk they also will install a section of an Ethernet cable on the Zarya module and a Russian experiment called Biorisk on Pirs.
Yurchikhin is the lead spacewalker, EV1. Kotov is EV2. Today's spacewalk, in Russian Orlan suits, is the first for both.
NASA Television coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 1:30 p.m.
+ Read more about today's spacewalk http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/exp15_eva18.html + Watch NASA TV http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
+ Expedition 15 Spacewalk Briefing Materials, May 23, 2007 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/exp15_msb_052307.html + Read more about the Progress 25 docking http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/exp15_progress25_launch.html + Read more about Expedition 15 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/index.html + View crew daily timelines http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/timelines/index.html