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Russian cosmonauts begin this year’s first space walk

All operations outside the ISS till the moment the hatch is closed again are to last about six hours 28 minutes
Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko TASS/Mikhail Dzhaparidze
Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko
© TASS/Mikhail Dzhaparidze

MOSCOW, August 10. /TASS/. Russia’s cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko have opened the hatch of the International Space Station’s Pirs compartment to begin a spacewalk under the Russian flight program, Mission Control near Moscow told TASS.

"All operations outside the ISS till the moment the hatch is closed again are to last about six hours 28 minutes," Mission Control spokesman said.

The spacewalk is to end at 23:48 on August 10.

Before leaving the docking compartment the cosmonauts placed a special safety ring that prevents the hatch from closing while they are outside.

Padalka is wearing an Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes identifying him as commander, and Korniyenko, a spacesuit with blue stripes.

This is the 41st spacewalk under Russia’s ISS program and 48th spacewalk from the Russian segment, including the unscheduled ones.

Padalka and Korniyenko are to install soft railing on the Zvezda service module, clean the porthole of the same module and install fixtures of radio antennas. After that they will take pictures of the Expose-R instruments, dismantle an experimental sensor and take smears from solar cell panels and other areas.

After that the cosmonauts will change the attitude of the pressure control block instrument on the smaller research module Poisk and finally take pictures of the outer surface of the Russian segment, Roscosmos said.

Padalka has eight space walks to his credit, including one to the depressurized module of the Mir space station, which lasted 33 hours and four minutes. Korniyenko had made only one spacewalk, staying 6 hours and 43 minutes outside spacecraft.

Russia’s cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, the United States’ Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren, and Japan’s Kimiya Yui, will remain on board.