Russian Members Of 65th ISS Expedition May Conduct Up To 3 Spacewalks - Training Center

Russian Members of 65th ISS Expedition May Conduct Up to 3 Spacewalks - Training Center

Russian members of the 65th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), which will start in April, may conduct up to three spacewalks to put into operation Russia's new multipurpose laboratory module Nauka (Russian for "science"), the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center said on Wednesday

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th January, 2021) Russian members of the 65th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), which will start in April, may conduct up to three spacewalks to put into operation Russia's new multipurpose laboratory module Nauka (Russian for "science"), the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center said on Wednesday.

"Up to three spacewalks may be conducted by the ISS-65 crew during the upcoming expedition to the ISS. The aim of the cosmonauts' extravehicular activity will be the gradual integration of the Nauka module into the Russian segment of the ISS," the center said in its press release.

The center added that the launch of the Soyuz MS-18 manned transport spacecraft, which is set to take the Russian cosmonauts to the ISS, was scheduled for April.

In November, Russian space corporation Roscosmos said that the Russian crew of the 65th expedition to the ISS would consist of three cosmonauts: Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergei Korsakov. In December, a source in the space industry told Sputnik that the United States might buy a seat on the Soyuz MS-18 for US astronaut Mark Vande Hei that might fly to the ISS instead of Korsakov.

Nauka module is designed for scientific work, storing cargoes, docking spaceships and research modules, as well as fuel transfer from the Progress spacecraft to the Zvezda Service Module. According to the draft schedule obtained by Sputnik in December, the launch of the module is planned for July 15.