U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide has completed almost a record long spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), NASA reported.

NASA Flight Engineer Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Hoshide spent 8 hours and 17 minutes in the outer space doing maintenance work on the ISS. The longest spacewalk of 8 hours and 56 minutes was made by U.S. astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss in 2001.

Williams and Hoshide, however, failed to fulfill their task of installing a new Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the International Space Station’s s-zero truss as they had difficulties driving the bolts to secure the equipment.

It was the second spacewalk outside the ISS of the current station’s Expedition 32. The previous spacewalk was completed on August 20 by Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Yury Malenchenko.

© RIA Novosti.

Spacewalk

The cosmonauts moved the Strela-2 cargo boom from the Pirs docking compartment to the Zarya module and installed micrometeoroid debris shields on the exterior of the Zvezda service module.