Two Russian cosmonauts breezed through a spacewalk outside the International Space Station Wednesday (Oct. 22) on a mission to collect old experiments and inspect their orbital home.
Clad in bulky Orlan spacesuits, cosmonauts Max Suraev and Alexander Samokutyaev planned to spend about six hours performing maintenance on the station, work that included tossing obsolete gear out into space. But ended up completing their work in just three hours and 38 minutes.
The cosmonauts began their spacewalk at about 9:28 a.m. EDT (1328 GMT) by collecting an experiment called Radiometria, which was designed to collect information on earthquakes and seismic activity on Earth. The instrument, which was installed on the Russian Zvezda service module in 2011, was no longer in operation, and the cosmonauts jettisoned the device toward the rear of the space station. [See photos of the spacewalk]
"It's so beautiful — look at my view," one of them said just before re-entering the space station. "We had enough walking outside. Time to go home."
A NASA commentator in Mission Control in Houston said the discarded experiment and antennas had "no potential for recontacting the space station" but they will be tracked as they orbit Earth and eventually burn up in the atmosphere.
Today's endeavor marked the second spacewalk for both Suraev and Samokutyaev — and the third spacewalk outside the space station in just three weeks. On Oct. 8, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman performed a spacewalk with European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst. Wiseman and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore completed another spacewalk on Oct. 15. Those five men and Russian cosmonaut Elena Serova make up the laboratory's six-person Expedition 41.
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