Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt completed the first of two Russian spacewalks planned for June at 8:46 a.m. EDT Friday. The second spacewalk is set for Wednesday at 2:45 a.m.

Friday's spacewalk started late after data showed slightly elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the Russian Orlan spacesuits. The spacewalkers reported they felt fine and went on to work outside the International Space Station for 4 hours, 54 minutes.

Padalka and Barratt installed docking antennas, a docking target and electrical connectors on the Zvezda service module in preparation for the arrival of a new module in November. The Russian Mini-Research Module-2 will dock automatically to the zenith port of Zvezda and will serve as an additional docking port for Russian vehicles.

Wednesday's spacewalk is scheduled to last about an hour with Padalka and Barratt set to replace a Zvezda hatch with a docking cone. The excursion will take place internally with the spacewalkers attached to umbilicals in Zvezda for life support.

Read more about the spacewalk
View spacewalk briefing graphics

Read more about Expedition 20
View crew timelines

2009 International Space Station Calendar

As part of NASA's celebration of the 10th anniversary of the International Space Station, the agency is offering a special 2009 calendar to teachers, as well as the general public.

The calendar contains photographs taken from the space station and highlights historic NASA milestones and fun facts about the international construction project of unprecedented complexity that began in 1998.

Download calendar (5.3 Mb PDF)