ISS cosmonauts to perform the 2nd spacewalk of the year this week—here's how you can watch it live

Two Russian cosmonauts are about to perform the second spacewalk of the year outside the International Space Station, according to NASA. Station commander Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Flight Engineer Sergei Mikaev will leave the confines of the pressurized sections of the orbital outpost at 10:15 am EDT on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. Their main task will involve the installation and removal of hardware from various Russian-built modules, and the entire spacewalk could last about five hours with live coverage made available by NASA. The last extravehicular activity (EVA) outside the ISS was Spacewalk 94, and it took place in March.

Commencing at 9:45 am, a stream of the entire event will show the Roscosmos space inhabitants' activities on NASA's YouTube channel, Amazon Prime, as well as NASA+. Links to the aforementioned stream will also be available across the agency's social media platforms, such as X and Facebook. This will be the first EVA for Mikaev and the second for Kud-Sverchkov. Their fellow crew members and even those watching the event online will be able to tell the two apart from the color of the stripes on their suits—Mikaev's suit will have blue stripes while Kud-Sverchkov's will have red stripes.

The two Expedition 74 crew members will have the installation of a solar radiation experiment on the agenda. This instrument will be secured on to the Zvezda service module, while other science hardware will be removed from the Poisk and Nauka modules. Capturing the recently arrived Progress 94 cargo spacecraft has also been scheduled in case enough time remains to examine the Kurs rendezvous antennas. These antennas had failed to deploy at the time of the Soyuz cargo variant's arrival, leading to Kud-Severchkov taking manual controls via a panel inside the Zvezda module. 

If all goes well, this will be the 279th spacewalk overall outside the orbital laboratory and will be the last for Mikaev and Kud-Sverchkov before their return to Earth this summer with MS-28, along with NASA astronaut Chris Williams. They will be replaced by Soyuz MS-29 crew members in cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, who will be joined by NASA astronaut Anil Menon. Thereafter, the SpaceX Crew-12 currently living and working in the station are also slated to return later in the year.

Together, with the arrival of the four crew members of SpaceX Crew-13, the aforementioned MS-29 trio will form the eventual crew members of Expedition 75 based on NASA's plans for crew rotation this year. They will carry out the next leg of scientific research and station upkeep tasks in pursuit of keeping one of humanity’s homes in space operational till its planned de-orbit in 2030. 

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