The commander of the International Space Station, Oleg Kononenko, and flight engineer Alexey Ovchinin completed the first spacewalk in 2019 under the Russian program, having worked outside the orbital station for 6 hours and 1 minute.
As a greeting, the cosmonauts fixed the sign “Leonov № 1” and “Happy Birthday, Alexey Arkhipovich” to their spacesuits and took a photo of Leonov into space, which will be returned to Earth to be presented to the hero of the day.
In addition, at the very beginning of the exit, the cosmonauts turned to Alexey Leonov with a congratulatory speech: Oleg Kononenko and Alexey Ovchinin decided to dedicate their “space walk” to Alexey Leonov, the first man of the planet, who made an exit to open space.
On May 30th the legendary cosmonaut turns 85 years old!
For the ISS commander Oleg Kononenko, this was the fifth spacewalk, and for Alexey Ovchinin – the first in his career.
The crew of the 59th international expedition continues the flight program.
