NASA TV to air Tuesday’s Space Station Spacewalk

HOUSTON -- NASA Television will provide live coverage of the March 10 spacewalk of Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov. The pair will complete unfinished work from their December 2008 excursion outside the orbiting laboratory.

Fincke and Lonchakov will don Russian spacesuits for the spacewalk out of the Russian Pirs Docking Compartment airlock. Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus will monitor the spacewalk from inside the station. It will be the sixth spacewalk of Fincke’s career and the second for Lonchakov.

NASA TV coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 11 a.m. CDT Tuesday. The spacewalk will start at approximately 11:20 a.m. and last five and a half hours.

The centerpiece of the spacewalk will be the installation of a European materials science experiment, which allows short and long-term exposure to space conditions and solar UV-radiation, on the hull of the Zvezda service module. The experiment, known as Expose, was installed on Zvezda during the December spacewalk but had to be removed and brought back inside the station because of a cable problem. That problem has been repaired.

For information about NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the space station and the Expedition 18 crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station