CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut made fast work of a spacewalk inside the International Space Station Friday, setting the stage for the delivery later this year of a new Russian docking compartment.
Working within a cramped station section that was depressurized for the job, Yuri Usachev and Jim Voss put in place a cone-like docking mechanism that will link the new Russian compartment to the complex after its launch in late August or September.
The task which had been expected to take the better part of an hour was finished up in just 19 minutes.
"It was easier than during the training session," outpost commander Usachev told specialists at Russias Mission Control Center in Moscow. Usachev and Voss trained extensively for the job at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City.
The spacewalk was the first to be staged by a resident crew of the 17-story station. Visiting space shuttle crews have performed all previous spacewalks at the outpost.
The so-called "internal" spacewalk called for Usachev and Voss to crawl into a spherical section at the end of the stations Russian-made crew quarters. Crewmate Susan Helms remained inside the stations Zarya space tug.
Usachev and Voss then donned Russian Orlan, or Eagle, spacesuits before the section was depressurized, and while neither ventured outside the outpost, Russian space officials consider work done in a vacuum a spacewalk.
Working within a section the size of a walk-in closet, Usachev removed a submarine-like hatch from a port facing the Earth, and Voss took time to look out the open door.
"Its very dark out here after the sun goes down," Voss said.
Keeping up a constant banter with Russian ground controllers, the pair strapped the flat hatch to a wall and then positioned the cone-like docking mechanism in the open port.
Weighing in at 150 pounds (67.5 kilograms), the mechanism will serve as the receiving end of a drogue-and-probe docking device that will link the new Russian compartment to the station.
The Russian Docking Compartment is an airlock that will enable station residents wearing Orlan suits to stage spacewalks from the Russian segment of the station.
Station tenants wearing either U.S. or Russian suits will be able to stage spacewalks from an American-made airlock that is to be hauled up to the outpost by a visiting shuttle crew next month. That mission now is tentatively scheduled for launch aboard Atlantis on July 7.
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