Yes, even in space, you need to wash the windows: on the tenth of August, two astronauts rubbed the illuminator, did an inventory of the exterior of the International Space Station, collected the results of experiments, and all this overcoming the cold of outer space.
The Russian residents of the space station have experience in such matters: for the flight engineer Mikhail Kornienko this is the second way out, and for the commander of the 44th expedition Gennady Padalka - the tenth. Padalka is the most experienced person in history as far as spacewalks are concerned: he has a total of 35 hours. The first time was in 1998, when he repaired damaged cables at the Russian Mir station. It was the 188th station astronauts, which, in general, is 1 177 hours (49 days) in open space.
The exit began at 10:20 am European time and lasted 5 hours and 31 minutes, an hour less than planned. While they were outside, Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren from NASA, along with Kimia Yui from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, took samples of the first NASA crop grown in space.
The astronauts needed to clean the second window on the maintenance module, which became muddy due to emissions from the thruster. This was Kornienko’s task: “This is on your shoulders,” Padalka told him. And, after the victorious conclusion: "It is just as new!" During the release, they photographed the Russian module outside to check for wear around the engines and took the opportunity to take a panoramic picture of the Earth turned to them by Australia - at the bottom they saw the city of Brisbane just before falling off the air for a few minutes when they switched between communication satellites.
Later, the duo collected the results of an experiment in 2013 called “Environment” and designed to find out how the overheated cosmic gas affects the shell of the ISS.
They also got rid of the old communication antenna WALL 6, which they held onto to shoot it closer to the end of the flight. Later, while Kornienko adjusted the position of the module in order to study the direction of engine ejection, Padalka posed in front of the viewport for the astronauts who were photographing him from the inside, and he himself shot them outside.
Finally, two astronauts proceeded to the gateway for decompression. Padalka seized the moment and threw the disconnected antenna into space, after two towels, which soaked their suits at the beginning of the mission.
"I have never seen anything more isolated," said the astronaut when they had to return to the closed space of the ship. "Like a can."
When the hatch was battened down, only one phrase sounded to the last piece of outer space: "What a view! Amazing!"
