A Russian cosmonaut took a short ride at the end of a robotic arm to jettison spent equipment that he and a crewmate collected during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Dec. 19).
Expedition 72 flight engineer Alexey Ovchinin secured his feet at one end of the European Robotic Arm (ERA) toward the end of his and Ivan Vagner’s seven-hour extravehicular activity (EVA) today. Fellow Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov controlled the 37-foot-long (11.3 meters) arm’s movement from inside the space station.
At the desired point, Ovchinin tossed the bundle of no longer needed electrical connectors, covers and an experiment boom overboard such that it would no longer come in contact with the orbiting laboratory before burning up while reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
The view from Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin’s spacesuit helmet-mounted camera shows a trash bundle as a just spec over Earth’s horizon (at top right) just minutes after he completed the jettison outside of the International Space Station on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (Image credit: NASA+)
“Here it goes, it is floating away,” said Ovchinin as he released the bundle with a push toward the aft end of the space station. “It is going away nicely.”
