The International Space Station crew comprising Expedition 13 successfully completed their first spacewalk together Friday, working outside the orbiting facility for a total of six hours and 31 minutes.
The crew's commander, Pavel Vinogradov, and its science officer, Jeff Williams, re-entered the airlock of the Pirs docking compartment Friday at 1:19 a.m., Eastern Time, after an extravehicular activity that focused on repairs and retrieval of scientific experiments.
During their spacewalk, the two astronauts repaired a vent for the station's oxygen-producing Elektron unit, they retrieved experiment results, and they replaced a camera on the orbiting laboratory's rail car system.
Wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits, they moved from Pirs to the Strela hand-operated crane, and used it to move about the station's Russian segment.
The Elektron vent repair was the first task. Because of a problem with that vent, Vinogradov had to reroute the unit's hydrogen vent line to a vent also used by the Vozdukh carbon-dioxide-removal system. The repair re-established the vent line.
The Elektron breaks down water into its components, hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is used in the station and the hydrogen is vented overboard. The repair, involving installation of a nozzle on the neck of a valve, was followed by a few minutes to photograph the area.
Next, Vinogradov removed a plate from the Kromka experiment. Kromka looks at contamination from thruster jet firings and devices to protect the station's exterior from them. While Vinogradov was tackling the plate, Williams removed a bio-risk experiment container from Pirs for return to the inside of the station. Bio-risk studies the effect of spaceflight on micro-organisms.
Vinogradov then removed slack in a cable of an antenna on the Zvezda service module. The antenna is designed for docking of the unpiloted European Automated Transfer Vehicle, scheduled for its first launch next year. Meanwhile, Williams retrieved another contamination-monitoring device from Zvezda.
The spacewalk's final and longest major task was replacement of a malfunctioning camera on the Mobile Base System, which moves the Canadarm2 robotic arm along the rails on the station's main truss. Both spacewalkers worked on that job. With the crew a little behind schedule, mission controllers approved an extension of the spacewalk so the task could be completed.
Before re-entering the station, Vinogradov and Williams secured the Strela. It was Vinogradov's sixth spacewalk and the second for Williams.
