The Russian cosmonauts of the ISS Expedition 17 crew have successfully carried out the main task during the unscheduled six-hour spacewalk for the Russian programme, Itar-Tass reported. Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko returned into the station and closed the hatches at 05:07 Moscow time on Friday. The main task of the spacewalk is carried out, a spokesman for the Mission Control Centre based near Moscow, Valery Lyndin, told Itar-Tass. The cosmonauts took a bolt from the lock that joins the landing vehicle with the apparatus unit of the Soyuz spacecraft, he said. Volkov and Kononenko started the first unscheduled spacewalk for Russian programme purposes at 22:56 Moscow time on Thursday. The main task was to examine the Soyuz and remove one of the five exploding bolts to take it to the earth then. Examination of the Soyuz was needed after the two previous spaceships Soyuz TMA-10 and Soyuz TMA-11 came off the planned path to the so-called ballistic trajectory when descending to the earth and the crews as a result had to experience 8.0-9.0-unit acceleration force. After a thorough analysis, specialists supposed that the fall into the ballistic-trajectory descending was caused by one of the exploding bolts separating a landing capsule from the spacecraft unit before coming into the atmosphere. Speaking about another operation not fulfilled during the spacewalk, Lyndin said that installing of a target on the upper unit of the Pirs docking module was planned for a spacewalk scheduled for July 15 and it was added to the operation as an additional task. But the operation to remove the bolt was rather difficult, and the cosmonauts had not time for the other task.
