Two Astronauts Return to ISS After 7-Hour Spacewalk, NASA Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Two international astronauts, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and France's Thomas Pesquet have returned safely to the International Space Station (ISS) after completing a spacewalk that spanned nearly seven hours, NASA said.

"Astronauts Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) have concluded the first spacewalk conducted by two international partner astronauts out of the International Space Station’s Quest airlock at 3:09 p.m. EDT, after 6 hours and 54 minutes," NASA said in a statement on its website.

During the spacewalk, the astronauts put together and attached a support bracket for the preparation of the installation of a third solar panel. In addition, Hoshide and Pesquet replaced a floating point measuring unit, a device used to measure the electrical charging potential of the arrays and associated surfaces in its vicinity.

This was Hoshide's fourth spacewalk and Pesquet's sixth as well as the 12th in total this year. According to NASA's Twitter page, both astronauts burnt between 1,500 and 3,000 calories during their walk.

The ISS is currently seeing the 65th expedition which consists of Russian astronauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy, Americans Mark Vande Hei, Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough as well as Japan's Hoshide, who is also the station commander, and France's Pesquet.