Russian cosmonauts complete spacewalk ahead of schedule
KOROLYOV, Moscow region. Oct 23 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian cosmonauts Maksim Surayev and Aleksandr Samokutyayev have returned to the International Space Station (ISS) after almost a four-hour spacewalk, a source with the Mission Control Center (Korolyov, Moscow region) told Interfax-AVN.
"The cosmonauts have completed all tasks during the spacewalk," the source said.
Initially, it was planned that the spacewalk will last slightly more than six hours.
The cosmonauts wore Orlan-MK spacesuits made by NPP Zvezda, based in Tomilino, Moscow region. For both of them this was the second spacewalk in their careers.
During the spacewalk the cosmonauts dismantled and jettisoned the RK-21-8 radiometric system, removed the protective cover from the Expose-R research equipment (exposure of samples of organic and biological material to outer space conditions), took swabs from portholes to assess the destructive impact of microflora on the station's surface, cut off and jettisoned two narrow-beam antennae, 2ASF1-1 and 3ASF1-2, and photographed the station's exterior.
This was the Russian ISS program's 40th spacewalk. The rest of the ISS crew supported their colleagues from inside the station.
Other crew members on board apart from Surayev and Samokutyayev are Russian cosmonaut Yelena Serova, U.S. astronauts Reid Wiseman and Barry Wilmore and European astronaut Alexander Gerst.
The head organization that created and runs the Russian segment of the ISS is RKK Energia (Korolyov, Moscow region).
