ISS commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin are expected to spend about six hours in outer space wearing Russian-made Orlan-M space suits.
It is the fourth spacewalk conducted by the crew since the beginning of the year. During the previous spacewalk February 8, Lopez-Alegria and another U.S. crewmember, Sunita Williams, removed and jettisoned two large shrouds and installed attachments for cargo carriers.
This time, the U.S. and Russian astronauts will attempt to repair damage caused by a mishap during the docking of a previous cargo spacecraft with the ISS October 27, when a guiding antenna failed to fold, and will perform a number of routine tasks in preparation for the next U.S. shuttle mission to the station, scheduled for March 15.
The current crew of the world's sole orbital station comprises U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, who arrived at the station September 20, and U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, who replaced the European Space Agency's German astronaut Thomas Reiter in December 2006, and who will remain on the ISS for another several months.
The next ISS expedition will comprise two Russian astronauts, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, and U.S. millionaire Charles Simonyi, who is set to fly to the ISS as a space tourist.
A Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft with the 15th ISS crew will be launched April 7, 2007 from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan, the Russian Space Agency said February 20.
