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Spacewalk today: watch space station astronauts live
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While the STS-119 crew awaits tomorrow night's launch of Discovery, the team onboard the International Space Station is focused on a vital spacewalk today.
Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov will head outside the station at 12:20 p.m. EDT. It will be the sixth spacewalk for Fincke and the second for Orlov.
They'll re-install a vital life sciences experiment, the EXPOSE-R seed and spore module. The unit, which tests the cargo's reaction to the space environment, was intalled during a December spacewalk, but failed to activate.
Astronauts then had to uncouple it and bring it back inside for repair work. Also on today's to-do list: secure insulation on the Zvezda docking port, remove some strapping, and perform documentary photography,
The spacewalk will be aired live on NASA TV, beginning at noon. Lonchakov, the lead spacewalker or EV 1, will wear the Orlan suit with the blue stripes. Fincke will be EV 2 and will wear the suit bearing the red stripes.
Inside, astronaut Sandy Magnus will monitor the spacewalk, which is scheduled to take about five and one-half hours. She's also packing up and getting ready for her ride home aboard Discovery at the end of its upcoming mission. Mission Specialist Koichi Wakata will replace her.
Image credit/NASA
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