Russian cosmonauts conclude spacewalk, return to ISS ahead of time

MOSCOW. June 23 (Interfax) - Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin successfully accomplished the tasks of their spacewalk and returned to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier than planned, Roscosmos said.

"Members of the 69th long-duration expedition to the International Space Station Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin closed the exit hatch of the Poisk small research module at 11:48 p.m. Moscow time today [June 22]," Roscosmos said in a statement.

Their spacewalk, which was initially expected to take 6 hours and 51 minutes, last 6 hours and 24 minutes.

During the spacewalk, they installed and connected the RSPI-M, new equipment for high-speed telemetry transmission from the ISS Russian segment to Earth, dismantled the Seismoprognoz system, which was previously used for data transmission, and its data relay unit, removed the Impact experiment's equipment and retrieved a biological sample exposure package, located outside the ISS for 19 years.

They also removed one of the three containers of the Biorisk-MSN equipment, which was used to study the impact of the outer space environment on spacecraft materials, from the Poisk module.

The cosmonauts started the spacewalk at 5:24 p.m. Moscow time on Thursday.

It was Prokopyev's seventh spacewalk and Petelin's fifth.