On May 4, 2023, two Russian Roscosmos cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, completed a spacewalk to transfer an equipment airlock from the Rassvet module of the International Space Station (ISS) to the Nauka science module. A third cosmonaut, Andrey Fedyaev, stayed inside the station to operate the European Robotic Arm to move the airlock. Prokopyev and Petelin started their task by disconnecting six cables from the airlock at the Rassvet module before moving over to the Nauka module to assist Fedyaev as he moved the airlock to its new location. However, Fedyaev initially had trouble getting the latches to engage, so Prokopyev and Petelin held the airlock in place until the latches worked nominally. During the spacewalk, the cosmonauts also gathered redundant equipment that will be jettisoned from the station. The spacewalk lasted a total of 7 hours and 11 minutes. The airlock will be used to launch Russian satellites and experiments from its new location. A previous scheduled attempt to move the module was postponed “due to the need for a more detailed study of its tasks,” according to Roscosmos. The cosmonauts are scheduled to conduct another spacewalk on May 12 to attach a radiator to the Nauka science module and to connect hydraulic and electrical lines.
