Cosmonauts Finish Record-Breaking Russian Spacewalk

207 Spacewalks at the International Space Station
As of Feb. 2, 2018, there have been 207 spacewalks at the International Space Station.

Expedition 54 Commander Alexander Misurkin and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos have completed a spacewalk lasting 8 hours and 13 minutes. It is the longest Russian spacewalk, breaking the previous record of 8 hours and 7 minutes that Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy set Dec. 27, 2013, on a spacewalk during Expedition 38.

The two cosmonauts opened the hatch to the Pirs docking compartment to begin the spacewalk at 10:34 a.m. EST. They re-entered the airlock and closed the hatch at 6:47 p.m. EST.

During the record-breaking spacewalk, the duo installed a new electronics and telemetry box for the high gain antenna on the Zvezda service module to enhance communications between Russian flight controllers and the Russian modules. The antenna system appears to be working normally.

It was the 207th spacewalk in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance, the fourth in Misurkin’s career, and the second for Shkaplerov. It is the fifth-longest spacewalk in human spaceflight history.

Learn more about station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts

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