ESA's astronaut to become Europe's first woman to spacewalk on July 21; How to watch live?

European Space Agency’s (ESA) astronaut Samantha Christoforetti is just one day away from making history. On July 21, she will become the first female European astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. According to ESA, Christoforetti will step out of the International Space Station (ISS) for her debut spacewalk, also called Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev. 

How to watch the spacewalk live?

You can watch the spacewalk live by tuning in to ESA's live webcast which begins at 15:30 CEST (7 p.m. IST) on the agency's website or the ESA Web TV. ESA says that the spacewalk will begin 30 minutes later and last for a total of seven hours. 

Purpose of the spacewalk

During their spacewalk, Christoforetti will be wearing a spacesuit with blue stripes as opposed to Astemyev’s red-striped spacesuit. The duo would exit the space station to complete a number of tasks including the installation of platforms and workstation adapter hardware mounted on the Nauka module of the space station. 

This includes the deployment of ten nanosatellites which are designed to collect radio electronics data during the EVA. They would also install a telescopic boom in place from the space station’s Zarya to Poisk module, which would be used to assist astronauts in future spacewalks.

The spacewalk also aims to get the European Robotic Arm ready for its first operations on the Nauka module, which is owned by the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. "The astronauts will move its external control panel, work on insulation and install a temporary adapter point for the robotic arm," the mission profile says.

"Samantha will spend some time making sure a window shield on the arm’s camera unit is clear enough to allow a laser light to guide the arm for grappling and moving around."

The Robotic Arm is an extremely important component of the space station as it serves a range of purposes such as removing or replacing experiment payloads, transfer of payloads in and out of the ISS, and transporting crew members from one side of the ISS to another. Notably, this is the same Robotic Arm that became the centre of controversy after the now-retired Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin ordered his cosmonauts to halt its usage.