Watch as Two Russian Cosmonauts Perform a 6-hour Spacewalk

International Space Station engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin began a scheduled 6-hour spacewalk at 9:32 a.m. EDT on Monday when they opened the hatch to the orbiting lab's Pirs docking compartment.

Both Yurchikhin and Misurkin are conducting the excursion in preparation for the addition of a new Russian module later this year, according to a NASA press release.

During the spacewalk, the two are scheduled to replace a fluid flow control panel on the station's Zarya module and install clamps for future power cables in order to swap the Pirs airlock with a new multipurpose laboratory module.

The Russian Federal Space Agency plans to launch a combination research facility, airlock and docking port later this year.

Yurchikhin and Misurkin are also tasked with retrieving several science experiments located on the outside of the Zvezda service module.

The spacewalk marks the 169th conducted in support of space station assembly and maintenance and the sixth for Yurchickhin and Misurkin.

Yurchikhin is wearing an Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes while Misurkin has donned a suit with blue stripes.

Both spacewalkers are equipped with NASA helmet cameras to provide close-up views of their work.

This is the second of up to six Russian spacewalks planned for this year. Meanwhile, two U.S. spacewalks by NASA's Chris Cassidy and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano are scheduled for July.

Meanwhile, inside the station the other four Expedition 36 crew members, which includes Commander Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineers Cassidy, Parmitano in addition to NASA's Karen Nyberg, are providing spacewalk support as well as continuing their own work on a variety of science and maintenance activities.

Cassidy and Vinogradov will be isolated in their Soyuz TMA-0M spacecraft attached to the Poisk module on the Russian segment to the closure of hatches to the other passageways on the Russian side of the station, NASA reports.

Parmitano and Nyberg, on the other hand, are free to move about the U.S. portion of the station since their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft is docked to the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing side of the Zarya module.

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