Two Russian cosmonauts who last month carried the Olympic torch into open space for the first time finished a spacewalk on Saturday to replace equipment on the outside of the International Space Station. The spacewalk began on Friday afternoon and lasted 8 hours 10 minutes.

The cosmonauts, Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky, installed equipment on the hull of the space station including high-resolution cameras to photograph the earth and a foothold for use in future spacewalks. They also detached an old experiment module and threw it overboard into open space.

The cosmonauts exited the Pirs airlock on the Russian side of the space station and were wearing Russian Orlan-MK space suits.

NASA astronauts aboard the space station conducted two spacewalks last Saturday and Monday to fix a failed pump that regulates the station's internal temperature.

The spacewalk on Friday is Kotov's fifth and Ryazansky's second.

Russian cosmonauts Kotov and Ryazansky start ISS spacewalk

Two Russian cosmonauts who last month carried the Olympic torch into open space for the first time began a spacewalk on Friday to replace equipment on the outside of the International Space Station. The work on the space station is due to take seven hours, said a representative of Russia's Mission Control Center.

The cosmonauts, Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky, are tasked with installing equipment on the hull of the space station including high-resolution cameras to photograph the earth and a foothold for use in future spacewalks. They will also detach an old experiment module and throw it overboard into open space.

The cosmonauts exited the Pirs airlock on the Russian side of the space station and were wearing Russian Orlan-MK space suits.

NASA astronauts aboard the space station conducted two spacewalks last Saturday and Monday to fix a failed pump that regulates the station's internal temperature. The spacewalk on Friday is Kotov's fifth and Ryazansky's second.

ISS crew preparing for spacewalk
Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy are going to complete a spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS) today. "The exit hatchway will be opened at 17:00 Moscow Time," the Flight Control Center informed Interfax.

The spacewalk will last approximately seven hours. It will be carried out from the Pirs docking compartment; cosmonauts are going to wear Orlan-MK spacesuits produced by the Research and Development Production Enterprise Zvezda. This will be one of the cosmonauts' last spacewalks in these spacesuits. Next year, new generation spacesuits Orlan-ISS will be delivered to the station.

This will be Oleg Kotov's fifth spacewalk and Sergey Ryazanskiy's second. Besides, this is the sixth spacewalk in 2013 according to the Russian mission plan.

Cosmonauts will install a Yakor support platform on the remote workplace of the Zvezda service module; install high resolution cameras (HRC) and medium resolution cameras (MRC) (the cameras are designed for shooting the Earth's surface by Canadian company UrtheCast); remove the dismountable swivel handhold; dismantle and throw into the open space the monoblock of the Vsplesk experiment and install a Seysmoprognoz monoblock in its place; disassemble the removable cassette container # 2; replace the transition frame with a transition beam and if there is time, throw the transition frame into the open space.

If time permits, the cosmonauts will also photograph the Russian segment of the ISS in search of damage from micrometeorites and space debris.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy, Mikhail Tyurin, US astronauts Michael Hopkins, Rick Mastracchio, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata are keeping watch at the ISS at the moment.