CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Two cosmonauts marched through a historic 100th Russian spacewalk Monday, mounting a new construction crane and a mishmash of other gear outside the International Space Station.
With the 17-story outpost flying 240 miles (384 kilometers) above the planet, Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin worked at a leisurely pace when the station was on the sunlit side of Earth, setting up the crane, handrails, a ladder and radar antennas, among other things.
And while the cosmonauts found it difficult working in darkness on the night side of the planet, the duo did take a sunlit opportunity to gaze down on snowcapped mountains, meandering rivers and pearl blue seas below.
"The view is incredible," rookie spacewalker Turin exclaimed.
Coming three weeks after a new Russian airlock was launched to the station, the four-hour, 58-minute spacewalk was the first of three that the so-called Expedition Three crew will carry out at the station.
The primary aim of the excursions: Outfitting the exterior of the "Pirs" or Pier, module, a barrel-shaped airlock that will double as an extra parking place for Russian Soyuz crew transport vehicles and Progress cargo carriers.
Launched Sept. 16 from Kazakhstan, the Pirs module was inaugurated at 10:23 a.m. EDT (1423 GMT) as first Turin and then Dezhurov floated out of one of its two round exit hatches. The outpost was flying above the southern tip of South America at the time.Station skipper Frank Culbertson watched on from inside the complex as the two made fast work of their first task: routing a spacesuit data transmission cable between the Pirs module and the station's Russian-built crew quarters.
Handrails then were installed outside the module's exit hatches before the cosmonauts set up a ladder between Pirs and the Zvezda crew quarters -- a bridge that will enable future spacewalkers to cross from one cylindrical segment to the other.
"A very smooth start to this first spacewalk for the Expedition Three crew," NASA flight commentator Rob Navias said from the agency's Mission Control Center in Houston.
The sortie from that point continued in fits and starts. Work slowed every 45 minutes as the station passed from the sunlit to the night side of Earth, making it hard for Dezhurov and Turin to see in orbital darkness. Still, the cosmonauts were able to get most of their work done.
Turin and Dezhurov, the latter a veteran of five previous spacewalks at Russia's former Mir space station, installed two antennas that will provide critical radar data when Soyuz and Progress craft pull up and dock at a berthing port at the end of the Pirs module.
They also positioned a docking target that will serve as a key aim point when Soyuz and Progress ships make final approaches to the outpost.
And they set up a telescoping construction crane known as a Strela boom. Capable of extending about 40 feet (12 meters), the crane-like device will be used to move cargoes -- or spacewalkers -- around the outside of the Russian segment of the station.
The only work left undone: a functional test of the Strela boom that called for Turin to perch himself on its end to test its strength and rigidity. That test now will be carried out either during a second spacewalk scheduled for Oct. 14 or a third sortie slated for Nov. 5.
Monday's spacewalk was the 27th to be conducted as part of the near-global effort to raise the international station -- a joint project of 16 space agencies in the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada, Japan and Brazil.
Astronauts and cosmonauts now have tallied 172 hours and 22 minutes of spacewalking work as part of that endeavor.
Dezhurov and Turin, meanwhile, secured a place in space history books. Their excursion marked the 100th spacewalk to be carried out by Russian cosmonauts.
The first of those -- and the world's first such excursion -- came on March 18, 1965, when cosmonaut Alexi Leonov spent 12 minutes outside a Voskhod spacecraft.
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