(Update: Cancelled) Space residents gearing up a pair of spacewalks outside ISS

The Expedition 68 crew members onboard the International Space Station (ISS) are ramping up for a pair of spacewalks, which are set to take place in the next several days outside the station.

According to NASA, on Wednesday, December 14, Expedition 68 Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin will exit the Poisk module's airlock in their Orlan spacesuits. The duo will spend about seven hours transferring a radiator from the Rassvet module to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. The spacewalking duo will be supported by Flight Engineer Anna Kikina from inside the Nauka module by operating the European robotic arm.

The two cosmonauts spent Monday getting their suits and the Poisk airlock ready for the upcoming excursion. They configured their spacesuits' life support and communications components and then collected and organized the tools they will be using during the spacewalk.

The Russian duo also closed the hatch and performed leak checks on the ISS Progress 82 resupply ship which is docked to Poisk just outside its airlock, the U.S. space agency said.

Two cosmonauts and two astronauts kick off the workweek getting ready for a pair of spacewalks as science continues aboard the station. https://t.co/Fne7Lc46vW

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) December 12, 2022

Next up, NASA Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio will conduct a spacewalk together on Monday, December 19. The two astronauts will install their second roll-out solar array, called International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA), on the Port-4 (P4) truss segment. The spacewalking duo installed their first iROSA on December 3 on the station's Starboard-4 truss segment opposite of the P4.

Update 1

The planned December 14 spacewalk by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin has been cancelled after ground teams noticed significant leaking of a coolant on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the International Space Station.