Russian cosmonauts take a six-hour spacewalk

Two Russian cosmonauts ventured outside the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday to carry out tasks under the Russian space programme, said the Russian Mission Control.

Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov were to spend a little over six hours outside the orbital station to move a 14-metre crane from a docking module to a small scientific module (MIM-2) and to install additional shields to protect the ISS from space debris.

The current spacewalk, which started at 06.31 p.m. with a 16-minute delay, is the first for the ISS crew this year.

The current ISS crew also includes NASA astronauts Don Pettit and Dan Burbank, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers.