We are all set for watching two Russian ISS-cosmonauts.
Expedition 28 Flight Engineers Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutyaev will leave the ISS, and set ARISSat-1 free.
All images here are screenshots from NASA-TV Live Stream.
Sitting savely at ESC, Jakoministrasse 16, we have connected a computer to the beamer, set up the PA-system and now we are waiting.
With a delay of about 25 minutes, the two leave the space station – wow, it is impressive! To be able to watch them in “realtime” is indeed touching.
Their first task for the 6-hour-space walk is to deliver the amateur radio satellite. It is amazing to see how complicated it is to move an object the small as a nano-sattelite out of the hetch of the ISS.
They moved the satellite in the right position, and were already set to switch it on.
And then they realized that they had only one antenna mounted, the second one is missing. Now the mission is postponed, see http://amsat.org for updates.
We sit here at ESC and imagine people searching the ISS now for the missing link.
And meanwhile we are still watching these amazing people connecting things outside the ISS. Since the live transmission started 3, 5 hours have passed, that means, that they surrounded Earth more than 2 times. There is a stable HD-video stream, we hear them talk in Russian and there is a synchronous translation into English. So we can follow what they do, constantly.
Like two little ants the two cosmonauts Sascha and Sergej move around the ISS and connect cables, and have to deal with shortness of them.
There must be a lot of people sitting at NASA head quarters wathing and following, what their Russian collegues are doing.
Would you rather be at headquarters on Earth or outside the ISS?
