Cosmonauts venture outside space station

Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev went outside the International Space Station on Monday to deploy a small Peruvian science satellite and tend to experiments mounted on the hull of the complex.

Wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits, the cosmonauts released a CubeSat named Chasqui 1 built by Peruvian National University of Engineering. The 2.2-pound spacecraft is fitted with a visible and infrared camera system to take pictures of Earth.

The Chasqui 1 nanosatellite was delivered to the space station by a Russian Progress supply ship in February.

The cosmonauts set up a European Space Agency exposure experiment on a work platform outside the Zvezda service module, installed a restraint on an automated phased array antenna, collected samples from a window to check for rocket thruster residue, and retrieved samples from other experiments outside the space station.

The spacewalk lasted 5 hours, 10 minutes, according to Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Read our full story for more details on the spacewalk.

Photo credit: NASA

Photo credit: NASA

Photo credit: NASA

Photo credit: NASA

Photo credit: NASA

Photo credit: Roscosmos

Photo credit: Roscosmos

Photo credit: Roscosmos

Photo credit: Roscosmos