The two men serving aboard the International Space Station donned Russian spacesuits and floated outside the orbital complex for a five-hour spacewalk on Thursday (local time).

The outing was the first for the crew since they arrived at the station four months ago and was cut short by an hour when they ran out of time for their final task. That work will be rescheduled for a future spacewalk.

Commander Sergei Krikalev, who turns 47 next week, and flight engineer John Phillips, 54, opened the hatch in the Pirs docking compartment just after 3 pm EDT (1900 GMT) to begin their work.

Krikalev, a Russian cosmonaut who was making his eighth spacewalk, immediately tackled the first task on the to-do list and retrieved a Russian medical experiment. Phillips, a US astronaut who made his first spacewalk, lingered in the airlock for a few minutes to prepare equipment and adapt to the new environment before joining Krikalev outside the space station.

"I feel great," Phillips radioed in Russian to ground control teams outside of Moscow.

The men retrieved and replaced several other space science experiments stashed on the outside of the complex and photographed a materials science experiment.

Krikalev and Phillips also installed a television camera that will be needed when Europe's new cargo vessel makes its debut flight to the station next year.

The final task of the spacewalk was to relocate a grapple fixture for a crane from outside the Zarya navigation and communications module and reposition it on the Unity connecting node.

Krikalev and Phillips are to be replaced by a new crew who will arrive in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in October.

Source: China Daily