Cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin conducted a 7 hour 29 minute spacewalk starting at 1436 GMT and ending at 2205 GMT on 16 August (the longest EVA conducted to date by Russian cosmonauts). The cosmonauts rerouted and installed cables to be used by the MLM module which is due to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) next year. The two spacewalkers attached a materials science experiment to the exterior of the Poisk module.
The same two Russian cosmonauts made a near six hour spacewalk (5 hours 58 minutes) from the ISS begining at 1134 GMT and ending at 0532 GMT on 22 August. During the spacewalk a laser communications experiment was replaced by a camera platform.
While these spacewalkers’ Russian-built Orlan spacesuits worked perfectly on both events, NASA is still investigating what happened to Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano when his US-made EVA suit began filling with water during a spacewalk he made with NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy from the ISS on 16 July. Parmitano noted on his blog that his vision was severely impared and that he feared that he might drown as water collected in his helmet.
