Expedition 30 Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov are currently preparing to start a six-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station.

Wearing the Russian Orlan spacesuits, Oleg and Anton are scheduled to exit the Pirs airlock at 15:15 CET (14:15 GMT). Their tasks are to attach five debris shields on the exterior of the Zvezda service module and to relocate one of two Strela telescoping cranes from the Pirs module to the Poisk module.

Expedition 17 crewmembers with Orlan spacesuit (left) and US spacesuit (right)

Expedition 17 crewmembers with Orlan spacesuit (left) and US spacesuit (right)

The Russian ISS crewmembers have been preparing for today’s spacewalk for a number of days, even performing a dry run inside the ISS on Tuesday.

Today’s spacewalk is the 162nd in support of ISS assembly and maintainence and is the only spacewalk scheduled during Expedition 30. The last ISS spacewalk took place on 3 August 2011. The spacewalk is scheduled to end at 21:15 CET (20:15 GMT) when the cosmonauts reenter the ISS.

Follow the Russian spacewalk on NASA TV from 14:45 CET (13:45 GMT): https://www.nasa.gov/ntv