Russian cosmonauts finish Olympic torch spacewalk

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two Russian cosmonauts who last month carried the Olympic torch into open space for the first time finished a spacewalk on Saturday, Dec 28 to replace equipment on the outside of the International Space Station, according to RIA Novosti.

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.