MOSCOW - U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov hovered around the international space station Tuesday during a six-hour spacewalk to perform maintenance work and install experiments.
Station commander Fincke and Lonchakov installed Russian and European probes on the exterior of the space station more than 320 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
"OK, going out into space again," Fincke was heard saying in Russian to Lonchakov over the radio as he floated in the frigid vacuum of space.
"It's good to be here again."
The comments were audible on a live NASA video feed over the Internet.
The video feed showed Fincke and Lonchakov in their Russian-built Orlan space suits leaving the station from a hatch on its Pirs docking compartment.
Fincke, in a red-striped suit, and Lonchakov, in a blue-striped suit, could be seen attaching cables and performing other tasks as the sun periodically rose and set on the cosmic construction site.
Lonchakov referred to Fincke using the Russian affectionate diminutive "Misha" as the two passed tools and cables to each other illuminated by lights attached to their helmets.
Russian scientists hope data from the so-called Langmuir probe, installed by Fincke early in the spacewalk, will help explain malfunctions that have repeatedly occurred as a Russian module has attempted to separate from the space station.
The Soyuz module entered the Earth's atmosphere too steeply in separate descents after detaching from the station in October 2007 and April this year, leading to faster- and bumpier-than-usual falls for the crews.
Investigators believe the Soyuz capsule detached too late because a so-called pyrobolt -- an exploding connector that keeps the module fixed to the space station -- failed to detonate on time.
Other experiments and probes were to be deployed and retrieved during the walk.
One experiment, from the European Space Agency, will be attached to the outside of the station to gather data on the effects of the space environment on a variety of materials.
The test, known as EXPOSE-R, is to be placed on a small platform on the outside of the station's Zvezda module.
It was Lonchakov's first venture into open space but Fincke's fifth spacewalk; and the 119th spacewalk from the international space station.
U.S. flight engineer Sandra Magnus, the third member of the station's Expedition 18, was inside the station helping co-ordinate the mission with centres in Houston and outside Moscow, Russia.
