Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner have completed their extravehicular activity (EVA), closing the exit hatch of the "Poisk" module of the International Space Station. This was reported by the Roscosmos press service.
During the tasks, the cosmonauts installed the SPIN-X1-MVN X-ray spectrometer on the external surface of the "Zvezda" module. Specialists repeatedly suggested they take a break, as most of the work required high precision and fine motor skills.
In one of the moments waiting for instructions from Earth, Ovchinin performed a fragment from Lensky's aria from Pyotr Tchaikovsky's opera "Eugene Onegin", setting a creative mood.
Since the cosmonauts used the ERA robotic arm for the first time to remove debris from the station, specialists at the Mission Control Center asked them to capture this process on their cameras.
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The spectrometer, delivered to the station on the "Progress MS-28" cargo ship in August, will become a key instrument for the "All-Sky Monitor" experiment.
According to Alexander Lutovinov, Deputy Director of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the device will begin its work immediately after installation and will conduct 15 sky surveys in three years, helping scientists study supermassive black holes and their impact on the history of the Universe.
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