SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468

*Station Crew Conducting Spacewalk*

Image above: Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov (left) rides on end of the Strela crane with a bundle of debris panels as Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin operates the controls. Image credit: NASA TV

TO VIEW IMAGE GO TO: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov began an almost six-hour spacewalk from the Pirs docking compartment airlock around at 3:05 p.m. EDT today to install Service Module Debris Protection (SMDP) panels on Zvezda and reroute a Global Positioning System antenna cable. The start of the spacewalk was delayed by about 45 minutes as the crew resolved issues with the communication system.

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.

Live coverage of the spacewalk is available on NASA TV.

+ 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