US astronauts conduct seven-hour spacewalk outside ISS

Two US astronauts conducted a nearly seven-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), repairing the orbiting laboratory's robotic arm, replacing a blown fuse and installing a new high definition camera.

"After six hours and 49 minutes, today's #spacewalk officially ended at 2.36 p.m.," NASA tweeted on Friday night. "The duo completed all planned tasks."

Randy Bresnik and Joe Acaba officially began the spacewalk at 7.47 a.m., when they switched their spacesuits to battery power and floated out into the vacuum of space., reports Xinhua news agency.

During the spacewalk, the astronauts replaced a camera system on the Canadarm2 robotic arm's "hand" known as "latching end effector" that spacewalkers installed on October 5, a high definition camera on the starboard truss of the station and replaced a fuse on the Dextre robotic arm extension.

In addition, the two worked quickly and were able to complete several "get ahead" tasks, NASA said.

For example, Acaba greased the new end effector on the robotic arm, while Bresnik installed a new radiator grapple bar, it said.

This was the fifth spacewalk of Bresnik's career and the third for Acaba. It was also the third spacewalk at the ISS this month.

--IANS

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