Russian cosmonauts take space walks despite smoke and alarm at the space station

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The spacewalk began Thursday at 10:51 a.m. ET, with live coverage available on the TV channel and NASA website, and is expected to last six hours and 30 minutes. The pair of spacewalkers were out of the space station last Friday for about eight hours.

The spacewalk continued as planned, although the space station crew was awakened by a fire alarm around 10pm ET on Wednesday night. The alarm sounded for a minute after the sensors detected smoke in the Russian Zvezda module. The smell of smoke and burning plastic was also present in the U.S. parts of the space station.

The crew reacted quickly and replaced the air filters and all signs of smoke dissipated, according to NASA. However, the source of the smoke was not identified.

This is the second of up to 11 spacewalks by cosmonauts while working on Nauka, a multipurpose lab module that includes additional space for research and bedrooms.

In July, Russia’s newly docked module accidentally fired its thrusters, turning the space station out of control. At the time, there were three NASA astronauts on board, two Russian cosmonauts, a Japanese astronaut and a European Space Agency astronaut.
Dmitry Rogozin, general manager of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, told CNN, “We had a problem,” and blamed it on human error.

Nauka launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 21 and docked on July 29.

During Thursday’s spacewalk, Novitskiy and Dubrov will install railings and complete any unfinished cable routing work during the Sept. 3 spacewalk, which initiated power cable and ethernet connections for in the module.

Novitskiy is extravehicular crew member 1 of the Russian space suit Orlan with red stripes and Dubrov wears the blue striped space suit as a member of the extravehicular crew 2.

The exit will be the third spacewalk for both Dubrov and Novitskiy, as well as the 243rd spacewalk to support the assembly, maintenance and upgrade of the space station.

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Meanwhile, a spacewalk scheduled for Aug. 24, which was to include NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, will now take place on Aug. 12. September, with some changes.

The August spacewalk was postponed a day before it occurred due to what NASA described as a “minor medical problem” experienced by Vande Hei.

While no further details have been shared on the issue, other than the fact that it was not a medical emergency, Vande Hei will provide internal support during the Sept. 12 spacewalk as he continues to recover.

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European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet will take his place alongside Hoshide. During the walk, Hoshide and Pesquet will install a modification kit that will be prepared for future Solar Array Roll-Out installation tasks.

According to NASA, this will be the first spacewalk carried out from the lab’s Blackboard Quest orbiting by two international partner astronauts at the space station.

A 360-degree virtual reality camera will film Hoshide and Pesquet during their spacewalk, scheduled to begin Sunday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Live coverage will air on the TV channel and on NASA’s website from 7 p.m.

CNN’s Kristin Fisher contributed to this report.

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