Sunita Williams completes spacewalk outside ISS

Moscow, Aug 31 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide completed almost a record long spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), reported NASA.

NASA Flight Engineer Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Hoshide spent eight hours and 17 minutes in the outer space doing maintenance work on the ISS.

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.

The longest spacewalk of 8 hours and 56 minutes was undertaken by US astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss in 2001.

Williams holds the record of the longest space flight (195 days) for a woman in 2006.

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

--IANS/RIA Novosti

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