Washington, February 3: Two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have completed the longest Russian spacewalk lasting eight hours and 13 minutes, breaking the previous record of eight hours and seven minutes, NASA said. Expedition 54 Commander Alexander Misurkin and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos began the spacewalk at 10.34 am EST (9.04 PM IST),according to a blog post by the US space agency.

Expedition 54 Commander Alexander Misurkin and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos began the spacewalk at 10.34 am EST (9.04 PM IST),according to a blog post by the US space agency.

They re-entered the airlock and closed the hatch at 6.47pm EST (5.17 am IST), it said. During the record-breaking spacewalk, the duo installed a new electronics and telemetry box for the high gain antenna on the Zvezda service module to enhance communications between Russian flight controllers and the Russian modules. It was the 207th spacewalk in support of ISS, the fourth in Misurkin's career, and the second for Shkaplerov. It is the fifth-longest spacewalk in human space flight history.