The astronaut of Trentino origins will come out of one of the modules of the ISS in the company of the Russian Oleg Artemijev. During the extravehicular activity, 10 nano-satellites will be released into orbit
Samantha Cristoforetti’s great dream is about to come true. When, as a young girl, as an avid reader of space-themed science fiction novels, she plunged into cosmic adventures with astronauts floating in the cosmic void, she dreamed one day of being able to circle in open space, outside the spacecraft or the space module.
“I believe that for almost everyone who becomes an astronaut, one of the greatest wishes is to go on spacewalks. Of all the operations that take place in orbit it is the most exciting, extraordinary one, and I hope to carry out one sooner or later “- said the astronaut from Trentino, who has been living and working on the International Space Station with colleagues since the end of April. Americans and Russians for the Minerva mission, which will end at the end of September.
In the company of Oleg
And it will be in the company of a Russian that AstroSamantha will come out tomorrow (from 16 Italian time) from the hatch of one of the modules of the ISS: the cosmonaut Oleg Artemijev. And it will do so wearing an “Orlan” type space suit (or rather, a diving suit), which together with the portable survival backpack weighs 112 kilograms, a little more than the American Emu, and is a “single body”. while the American one is made up of two sections that connect with a large central metal ring.
The Russians have been using it since the seventies, and over the years they have modified and improved it both from the technological side and its structure. In fact, if in space the 112 kilos are not felt due to the relative absence of gravity, the diving suit is still bulky, and modifying the structure to make the movements of the astronaut less complicated who has to work for 6-7 hours in a vacuum still remains always priority.
The American Emu-type diving suits are in fact “out of service” due to the umpteenth water infiltration problem, which occurred last March 23 in that of the European astronaut Matthias Maurer. An accident similar to the one that seriously endangered Luca Parmitano in 2013. Consequently, from that moment on, the only operational spacesuits, for those known technically as “extravehicular activities”, are the Russian ones, for which the Italian astronaut was in any case she was trained in preparation for her second space mission.
Samantha Cristoforetti, who is in any case trained for both types of space suits (which are conceptually and technically different from each other) will thus become not only the first Italian, but also the first European to perform one of those space operations considered among the most spectacular but also more complex and risky.
Other than a walk: 7 hours of hard work
The external activity of Cristoforetti will last 7 hours, the time almost at the limit of autonomy of the Orlan suits. But it will not be, in a concrete sense, a walk in the park: the Italian astronaut and his Russian colleague will work outside the Space Station to work on the ERA (European Robotic Arm) program, the first robot capable of “walking” around the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
Lightweight and powerful, over 11 meters long, the arm has the ability to anchor itself to fixed points of the Station and to move back and forth on its own. It will serve as the main manipulator arm in the Russian part of the Space Station. Its seven joints can handle payloads of several tons with a wide range of motion for assembly tasks. Samantha will check that the arm’s camera unit guard is sharp enough for a laser to guide the arm when picking and moving.
During the extravehicular activity, 10 nano-satellites will also be released into orbit, so small that the two astronauts will be able to launch them by hand.
The list of women who have so far faced an extravehicular activity is not a very long list: the first was in July 1984 the Russian Svetlana Savitskaija, followed in the following decades by 13 Americans, including Katryn Thornton, who was part of the team of 4 mechanical astronauts who repaired and made the Hubble Space Telescope operational, in one of the most difficult and complex operations ever carried out by astronauts in outdoor activity. And among the most recent, there is also the Chinese Wamg Japing, which last year became the first and for now the only Chinese to take a “spacewalk”.
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