Russian Cosmonauts to Attach Thermal Insulation to Int’l Space Station

Russian cosmonauts will undertake a spacewalk on February 3 to get some practice fixing screen-vacuum thermal insulation onto the exterior of the International Space Station which is currently under repair in orbit, the Russian Mission Control Center said Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Sergey Volkov and Yuri Malenchenko are expected to commence their spacewalk on February 3 at 16:10 Moscow time [13:10 GMT].

"The Restoration experiment is one of the important tasks… Its aim is to practice attaching a film thermal coating, securing screen-vacuum thermal insulation onto the surface to be repaired and operations that require film materials to bond during space flights," the center said.

The cosmonauts will also practice methods of detecting leaks and controlling the outer surface of the ISS.

The ISS program is a joint project involving five space agencies: the United States' NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.