Russian cosmonauts venture out of ISS for the year's seventh spacewalk - Watch Live

The spacewalkers will be involved in collecting residue samples from various locations outside the Russian segment of the station and install handrails and struts to facilitate future excursions.

Photo Credit: @Space_Station/Twitter

New Delhi: Spacewalks are events in support of the International Space Station (ISS) assembly and maintenance, that science and space enthusiasts look forward to with the initiation of every consecutive expedition launch.

On Thursday, August 17, the two Russian cosmonauts on board the space station – Expedition 52 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy – are setting their foot outside the ISS to put things in order.

According to NASA, Ryazanskiy will begin the schedule of extravehicular activities with the manual deployment of five nanosatellites from a ladder outside the airlock. The satellites, each of which has a mass of about 11 pounds, have a variety of purposes.

One of the satellites, with casings made using 3-D printing technology, will test the effect of the low-Earth-orbit environment on the composition of 3-D printed materials. Another satellite contains recorded greetings to the people of Earth in 11 languages. A third satellite commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch and the 160th anniversary of the birth of Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

As per reports,the spacewalkers left the station's Pirs airlock at approximately 10:45 a.m EDT to deploy several nanosatellites, collect research samples, perform structural maintenance and to install handrails and struts to facilitate future excursions.

Yurchikhin will be designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1) for this spacewalk, the ninth of his career. Ryazanskiy, embarking on his fourth spacewalk, will be extravehicular crew member 2 (EV2). Both will wear Russian Orlan spacesuits bearing blue stripes, NASA reported.

LIVE Coverage of the spacewalk began at 10:00 am EDT on NASA Television and the agency’s website. You can check it out here.

This will be the 202nd spacewalk overall and the seventh spacewalk of 2017.