MOSCOW, April 25. /TASS/. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (TASS special correspondent) and Nikolay Chub are two or three hours ahead of their spacewalk’s schedule, said Dmitry Akhmerov, a lead engineer of the Extravehicular Activities Department of Russia’s state-run rocket and space corporation RSC Energia.

The two cosmonauts are currently performing their first spacewalk in 2024.

"We don’t just proceed according to the schedule, we are way ahead of it. About two, or maybe three hours ahead," Akhmerov said during the live forecast of the spacewalk.

The scientist said that the cosmonauts are expected to return to the ISS earlier than planned.

The first ISS spacewalk this year began at 5:57 p.m. Moscow time (2:57 p.m. GMT). It is scheduled to take six hours and 36 minutes.

During the spacewalk, Russian ISS crew members will install hardware for the Kvartz-M and Perspektiva-KM research experiments outside the Poisk module and complete the deployment of a radar on the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM), which could not be fully installed during the previous EVA in October.

If the astronauts have time, they will remove the Biorisk-MSN science equipment container from the Poisk module, deploy the pressure and deposition control unit on the same module, and take wipe samples from the surface of the Nauka MLM as part of the Test experiment.