Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and US astronaut Jeffrey Williams left the International Space Station (ISS) for a spacewalk early Friday, leaving the craft temporarily unmanned, Russian mission control said.
The two men opened the hatch at 2:48 am (2248 GMT) and stepped into space, leaving the ISS unmanned for the duration of the walk, which was scheduled to last five hours and 40 minutes, the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted mission control spokesman Valery Lyndin as saying.
They will clean an outlet from the ISS's oxygen generation system and bring back inside materials placed outside the station to evaluate the pollution levels from the station's engines, as well as containers with mushrooms and viruses used to determine whether micro-organisms could survive in space.
Source: Agence France-Presse
