A Successful Spacewalk for Russian Cosmonauts

Yesterday, International Space Station (ISSInternational Space Station) crew members Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos successfully completed the 213^th spacewalk in support of ISS assembly and maintenance. During the spacewalk, which lasted more than seven hours, Kononenko and Prokopyev inspected the external hull of the Russian Soyuz MS-09 crew vehicle attached to the ISS. The spacewalkers examined the area in the spacecraft where a pressure leak was detected and fixed in August.

Prokopyev, NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst are scheduled to return to Earth on the Soyuz vehicle next week after completing their six-and-a-half-month mission on the ISS.