Scott Kelly completes first spacewalk, sets US flight record

Photo credit: NASA

Washington: US astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren completed their first spacewalk on Wednesday, October 28, lasting seven hours and 16 minutes having completed most of the major tasks planned for their excursion outside the International Space Station (ISS).

Kelly and Lindgren returned to the space station's airlock where repressurization began about 3:19 p.m ET, marking the official end of the spacewalk, said NASA.

On Thursday, Expedition 45 commander Kelly has become the US astronaut who has lived in space the longest during a single US spaceflight.

Kelly and Lindgren applied a thermal cover on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer; applied grease to a number of components in one of the latching ends of the Canadarm2 robotic arm; and began work to rig power and data system cables for the future installation of a docking port to the station that will be used for the arrival of the Boeing Starliner CST-100 and SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, wrote NASA in its official website.

Kelly and Lindgren will carry out a second spacewalk outsite the ISS again on November 6, during which they will restore a truss cooling system to its original configuration following a 2012 spacewalk in which another team of astronauts attempted to isolate a leak of ammonia coolant.