Russian cosmonauts will conduct a space walk in August during which they will install additional anti-meteorite panels on the International Space Station (ISS), cosmonaut Yury Malanchenko said on Friday.
Malanchenko, his U.S. and Japanese colleagues, Sunita Williams and Hoshide Akihiko, are scheduled to depart for a space mission on July 15.
“We will have a space walk in August, which I will conduct together with [Russian cosmonaut] Gennady Padalka,” Malanchenko told journalists in Star City near Moscow, where Russian cosmonauts live and train.
“We will have to move a cargo platform so as to use it more conveniently in the future. We will also install meteorite protection panels [on the ISS],” he said, adding that the space walk will last six hours.
The panels are designed to protect the space station from small objects, including space debris.
