On August 15, 2018, two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station performed one of the longest spacewalks in the history of space exploration. During the spacewalk lasting 7 hours and 46 minutes, Expedition 56 Flight Engineers Sergey Prokopyev and Oleg Artemyev manually launched four small technology satellites and installed a German-led animal-tracking project named Icarus onto the Russian segment of the space station. Two of the satellites were only the size of tissue boxes.

Cosmonauts deliver a tiny satellite from the ISS (August 15, 2018)
Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Oleg Artemyev deliver a tiny satellite into Earth orbit from the ISS (August 15, 2018). Image: Oleg Artemyev on Twitter

The spacewalk was the 212th from the International Space Station, and the seventh this year. The third in Artemyev’s career and the first for Prokopyev. The two cosmonauts opened the hatch to the Pirs docking compartment to begin the spacewalk at 12:17 p.m. EDT. They re-entered the airlock and closed the hatch at 8:03 p.m. EDT.

Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 56 Flight Engineer Sergey Prokopyev during the Russian Spacewalk on August 15, 2018. The photo was taken by Oleg Artemyev. The duo manually launched four small technology satellites and installed a German-led animal-tracking project named ICARUS (short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) onto the Russian segment of the space station. Image: Oleg Artemyev on Twitter
Oleg Artemyev's selfie during the Russian spacewalk on August 15, 2018
Oleg Artemyev’s selfie during the spacewalk. Image: Oleg Artemyev on Twitter

You can see more photos on Oleg Artemyev’s VK page. You can also follow Oleg Artemyev (@OlegMKS) on Twitter.

ICARUS Initiative

Short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space, The ICARUS Initiative is an international effort to track the migratory patterns of small flying animals using satellite imagery. The project began in 2002.

ICARUS is a collaborative environmental experiment between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Roscosmos to study the migratory patterns of small animals on Earth. It consists of an antenna and GPS hardware to track the movements of animals that have been tagged with small GPS receivers. To study the migratory pattern of small animals, some of them were tagged with GPS hardware on Earth. The experiment may provide data about how animals move from one location to another, how animal population density shifts over time, and how diseases spread.

Space to Ground: ICARUS Ascending: 08/17/2018
NASA’s Space to Ground is your weekly update on what’s happening aboard the International Space Station.

Sources

M. Özgür Nevres

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