KOROLEV (Moscow region), February 26 – The next walk of Russian cosmonauts will take place in April-May 2023, Roscosmos CEO Yuri Borisov said on Sunday.
“The scientific program will continue. In April and May, there will be spacewalks to equip the Naoka module,” Borisov said at the mission control center after the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft docked with the International Space Station.
He added that the ship docked at the station “quietly”. On it, the crew of the former Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will return to Earth in normal mode.
On the Soyuz MS-22 itself, which will be launched to Earth without a crew, the results of experiments and other equipment will be returned, including faulty ones, for example, the battery of one of the Russian spacesuits that failed in August 2022.
The previous spacewalk under the Russian program took place on November 17, 2022. Cosmonauts Prokopiev and Petelin after him had to work four more times on the deck of the station, but the exits were postponed due to the depressurization of the cooling system of their ship.
An unmanned Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft has flown to the International Space Station to replace the previous Soyuz MS-22, whose thermal control system was depressurized in December last year.
The crew – Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petlin, as well as American astronaut Frank Rubio – will transfer their chairs to the new ship and return to it on September 27, 2023. Their journey, which began on September 21, 2022, will double and will last more than 370 days.
