RIA Novosti – Russian cosmonauts, Expedition 36 flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin have completed their spacewalk that lasted 6 hours and 34 minutes, the Russian Mission Control and NASA reported.
The cosmonauts conducted extravehicular activity to prepare for the addition of a new Russian module later in 2013. Misurkin made his first spacewalk this time, whereas for Yurchikhin, it was his sixth.
The two men replaced an aging fluid flow control panel on the International Space Station’s Zarya module as preventative maintenance on the cooling system for the station’s Russian segment.
They also installed clamps for future power cables to get ready for swapping the Pirs airlock with a new multipurpose laboratory module. Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos is expected to launch a research facility, airlock and docking port late in 2013 on a Proton rocket.
Yurchikhin, who wore the Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes, and Misurkin, who wore a suit with blue stripes, also retrieved two science experiments and installed a new one. To provide close-up views of their activity, the spacewalkers were equipped with NASA helmet cameras.
The spacewalk was the 169th in support of space station assembly and maintenance, NASA reported.
Image credit – NASA
