MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The 6-hour, 41-minute spacewalk took place on Saturday and was the first one for Virts, NASA reported on its website. Virts and Wilmore have two more spacewalks to perform on February 25 and March 1. The astronauts have completed one task ahead of schedule.
The spacewalk series is being conducted primarily to route cables to accommodate the delivery of new docking adapters that commercial crew vehicles will use in the future to bring astronauts to the ISS.
The current ISS crew comprises six specialists from the United States, Russia and the European Union. Wilmore is the mission commander. Flight engineers include Virts, Samantha Cristoforetti from the European Space Agency and three cosmonauts from the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) — Elena Serova, Alexander Samokutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov.
Serova became the first female Russian cosmonaut to visit the ISS when its 42nd and current expedition stepped on board the space station on September 26, 2014.
