OREANDA-NEWS Two American female astronauts Jasmine Mogbeli and Loral O'Hara will go into outer space on Wednesday from the International Space Station (ISS) to collect samples from its surface for the presence of microorganisms capable of existing in a vacuum, NASA reports.

The duo's exit from the Quest gateway will begin at 08:05 East Coast time (at 15:05 Moscow time) and will last about six and a half hours.

The astronauts will also have to dismantle the faulty antenna communication unit on the station's farm and replace one of the fasteners that allows the station's solar panels to be directed towards the Sun.

The astronauts' exit was planned on October 12, but was postponed due to a leak of the coolant of the backup radiator circuit of the Russian module "Science" of the station "to analyze the situation," NASA noted.

The crew of the 70th long-term expedition continues to work at the station - Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Konstantin Borisov, NASA astronauts Jasmine Mogbeli and Loral O'Hara, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa.