Russian Spacewalkers Volkov And Kononenko Handling Explosive Bolts by Milota Sidorova

Late that afternoon, as I was walking home, I was wondering how is the whole planet moving. The idea of that, there is still someone working, learning, cooking, running or sleeping made me feel like a small link in the planetary chain. However, my thoughts embraced just the Earth, those universal perpettum mobile principle spreads out into the space. And so it was with yesterday's space mission of two Russian astronauts. Just few minutes past seven p.m. they left the International Space Station and set up on theirs even second spacewalk this week.

During these following almost 6 hours they installed one science experiment, brought back another one, disposed explosive bolt from the space capsule Soyuz and straightened a radio antenna.
At first of all, both astronauts, International Space Station Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko, living on ISS since April 2008 poured themselves into including a docking target of a Russian mini research module on the space-facing side of Zvezda. Module should aid to cover the demand of upcoming double sized Russian crew.

Volkov and Kononenko made a quick switch off, when abolishing space Biorisk experiment focusing on space influence on bacteria and fungi. The experiment had been established by Expedition 15 spacewalkers and lasted almost a year. They also adjusted an experiment monitoring seismic effects via high-energy particle streams in the very close Earth's environment.

After few more reparations, they underwent the most difficult part of their trip – to remove the explosive bolt of space capsule Soyuz, that has been having significant problems while descending last months. According technicians it was a mistake of bolts that had speeded up the capsule and exposed the crew extremely high G-forces and landed hundreds miles from the planned area.. Volkov and Kononenko manipulated with a box of a force of M-80 firecracker and was easily to blown off. Naturally, one needs more than a rocky solid personality to handle this one. Moreover, when it's been more than quarter a year that you have been breathing natural Earth's air. Well, fair enough, that is the destiny of astronauts.

Due the possible failures and emergency, also American Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff has been called on to enjoy the crew of Russian spacewalkers, during the entire mission.
However, this time except of enormous portion of physical and mental exhaustion, nothing worse has happened.


related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080715/ap_on_sc/space_station;_ylt=Aju9RYGNSsi01vrFDwRuYbGs0NUE

by Milota Sidorova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.<br><br><font size=2>These news are original content from young talents around the world and are selected for you by Chris Cantell.</font><br>

posted by Lucia Adamova