Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev entered the vacuum of space before 11 a.m. ET in their puffy white spacesuits, and they are expected to spend about seven hours installing a 36 foot-long robotic arm on one of the space station’s modules.
Spacewalks are a routine effort on the ISS, but usually there are two Americans or Europeans, an American and a European, or two Russians working together. According to NASA, the last time a European astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut left the ISS in Russian-made Orlan spacesuits was in April 1999. (An American and a Russian also went on a joint spacewalk in 2009.)
Thursday’s spacewalk is Cristoforetti’s first and Artemyev’s sixth. Their joint venture comes as tensions on Earth between Russia and the United States and its allies have reached a fever pitch during the Ukrainian war, though NASA has repeatedly said the conflict has not affected cooperation in space.
Artemyev and Cristoforetti began their spacewalk Thursday by deploying “ten nanosatellites designed to collect data on radioelectronics”. Since the space station is already traveling at orbital speeds, deploying satellites is as easy as throwing them in one direction or the other.
The spacewalk is the sixth conducted on the ISS so far in 2022 and the 251st overall. Astronauts routinely leave the station to maintain the exterior, install new hardware, or conduct science experiments.
