Cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin conducts a spacewalk 260 miles above the Earth's surface and removes science hardware attached to the space station's Poisk module. Credit: NASA+
Cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin conducts a spacewalk 260 miles above the Earth’s surface and removes science hardware attached to the space station’s Poisk module. Credit: NASA+

Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner concluded their spacewalk Dec. 19 at 5:53 p.m. EST after seven hours and 17 minutes.

Ovchinin and Vagner completed all of their major objectives, which included installing an experiment package designed to monitor celestial x-ray sources and new electrical connector patch panels and removing several experiments for disposal. The two cosmonauts were unable to complete their non-critical final objective due to time constraints, which was to relocate a control panel for the European robotic arm, which is attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

This was the second spacewalk in Ovinchin’s career, and the first for Vagner. It is the 272nd spacewalk for space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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