{"id":11643,"date":"2021-06-02T17:19:21","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T09:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacewalkers-prepare-space-stations-russian-pirs-module-for-disposal\/"},"modified":"2021-06-02T17:19:21","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T09:19:21","slug":"spacewalkers-prepare-space-stations-russian-pirs-module-for-disposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacewalkers-prepare-space-stations-russian-pirs-module-for-disposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Spacewalkers prepare space station\u2019s Russian Pirs module for disposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR&nbsp;CBS NEWS&nbsp;&amp; USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_52072\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-52072\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-52072\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/dubrov1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/dubrov1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/dubrov1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/dubrov1-678x452.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/dubrov1-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-52072\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov wears an Oral spacesuit during a spacewalk Wednesday outside the International Space Station. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Two cosmonauts floated outside the International Space Station early Wednesday to wrap up preparations for detaching the two-decades-old Pirs airlock and docking compartment next month, clearing the way for the long-planned arrival of a new laboratory module.<\/p>\n<p>Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, opened the hatch of the Poisk module at 1:53 a.m. EDT to officially kick off the 238th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance, the sixth excursion so far this year and the first for both cosmonauts.<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of a seven-hour 19-minute outing, the cosmonauts first removed and replaced a failed component on the Zarya module; repositioned an extendable boom that was tethered to Pirs; and unplugged rendezvous antenna cables from Pirs and temporarily attached them to the Zvezda module on the other side of the docking interface.<\/p>\n<p>They then jettisoned the failed Zarya component, removed a \u201cgap spanner\u201d and installed two external experiment packages before returning to the Poisk module and closing the hatch at 9:12 a.m., officially bringing the spacewalk to a close. All planned objectives were accomplished.<\/p>\n<p>Launched in 2001, Pirs was attached to the Earth-facing port of the Russian Zvezda module. It served as an airlock for dozens of Russian spacewalks and provided a docking port for both unpiloted Progress cargo ships and Soyuz crew ferry craft. After today\u2019s spacewalk, and a few additional tasks inside the station, the decommissioned Pirs will be ready for removal after 20 years of service.<\/p>\n<p>If all goes well, the Russian multi-purpose laboratory module \u2014 Nauka \u2014 will be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan around the middle of July. Two days after launch, a Progress cargo ship now docked at Pirs will pull away from Zvezda, taking the old docking compartment with it. Both spacecraft will burn up harmlessly in a targeted re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>The 20-ton Nauka module will then fly itself to a docking at Zvezda in place of Pirs about a week after launch. The module will provide a roomy addition to the Russian segment of the station, including another docking port, a robot arm provided by the European Space Agency, an airlock and its own power and propulsion systems.<\/p>\n<p>Russian cosmonauts are expected to carry out multiple spacewalks to outfit the new module and connect power and data cables.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR&nbsp;CBS NEWS&nbsp;&amp; USED WITH PERMISSION Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov wears an Oral spacesuit during a spacewalk Wednesday outside the International Space Station. Credit: NASA Two cosmonauts floated outside the International Space Station early Wednesday to wrap up preparations for detaching the two-decades-old Pirs airlock and docking compartment next month, clearing the way for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}