Russian Spacewalkers Outfit Station's Exterior

Image above: Commander Sergei Volkov (top) operates the Strela hand-powered crane to position Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko during Tuesday’s spacewalk. Credit: NASA TV

(NASA) – International Space Station Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko wound up a 5-hour, 54-minute spacewalk at 7:02 p.m. EDT Tuesday after installing one experiment and retrieving another.

In this spacewalk, their second in less than a week, they also continued to outfit the station’s exterior, including the installation of a docking target on the Zvezda service module. It will help with the docking of a Russian mini research module on the space-facing side of Zvezda. That module will be launched next year.

The spacewalk was in Russian Orlan suits from the Pirs docking compartment. Volkov, the lead spacewalker or EV1, wore the suit with red stripes. Kononenko, EV2, wore the blue-striped suit.

Feel free to discuss this article in the forum…