RSC Energia announced the testing of new insurance for Russian cosmonauts, which will work during their spacewalks outside the ISS. A new tether fastening scheme was tested in the hydrolab of the Yu.A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center by cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev and RSC Energia test engineer Alexander Maltsev.
Currently, when working outside the station, cosmonauts always use two tethers at once — a short one (about a meter) and a variable length one. The short one significantly limits mobility. It was proposed to replace it with a tether whose length can be changed. This will allow the cosmonaut to move approximately two meters further from the tether points and move faster from one object to another.
In the hydrolab underwater in zero-gravity conditions, the testers checked the new insurance scheme in various situations: from simple movement and transportation of cargo outside the station to an emergency situation, for example, in which one of the cosmonauts lost the ability to move. During the testing process, specialists recorded the medical indicators of the testers and the time they spent on various operations. In general, the first tests of the new insurance were successful.
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