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Russian cosmonauts end spacewalk

“The cosmonauts returned to the station at 23:12 Moscow time and closed the hatches,” the Mission Control Centre told

© RUPTLY/TASS TV

KOROLEV, August 18 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian cosmonauts from the International Space Station (ISS) crew, Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov, have ended their spacewalk and returned to the station.

“The cosmonauts returned to the station at 23:12 Moscow time and closed the hatches,” the Mission Control Centre told ITAR-TASS.

During the almost five-hour spacewalk, the cosmonauts installed new equipment, took samples from the station’s portholes, took pictures of the thermal insulation on the station’s surface, and launched a nanonsatellite created by Russian and Peruvian students.

The other members of the ISS resident crew - Maxim Surayev of Russia, Steven Swanson and Gregory Wiseman of NASA, and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency - assisted their colleagues from inside the station.

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