2 Russian cosmonauts make successful 7-hour space walk

Two Russian cosmonauts from the long-term ISS-36/37 crew - flight engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin - have made a successful space walk, a third this year under the program of the Russian segment of the ISS. “Yurchikhin and Misurkin closed the hatches of the docking module Pirs at 02:04 Moscow time after spending seven hours and five minutes in space to have coped with all tasks,” Mission Control near Moscow told ITAR-TASS. On the outer surface of the ISS Yurchikhin and Misurkin started laying cables crucial to the docking with the multi-functional add-on laboratory module to be delivered to the ISS in December. Also, they installed soft handrails astronauts use during spacewalks. “The extra-vehicular activity lasted 27 minutes longer than expected,” Mission Control said. Both astronauts were wearing computerized Orlan spacesuits with liquid crystal displays on the chest offering prompts what systems should be checked and in what sequence before the space walk and what is to be done in case of an emergency. The other members of the ISS 36/37 crew - Russia’s Pavel Vinogradov, NASA’s Karen Nayberg and Christopher Cassidy, and Luca Parmitano, of the European Space Agency, provided standby support on board the ISS.