Our answer to Elon Musk: Russian cosmonauts have broken the record for staying in space

Two Russian cosmonauts: Alexander Misurkin, the commander of the ISS-53/54 expedition crew, and Anton Shkaplerov, an onboard engineer, have broken the world record for a person in a Russian spacesuit in outer space. Misurkin and Shkaplerov spent 8 hours and 13 minutes in space — seven minutes longer than Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky in December 2013. This is the first spacewalk in 2018.

The cosmonauts replaced the receiving equipment of the Zvezda module antenna on the ISS. Initially, it was planned that the exit would last 6 hours and 40 minutes — the astronauts left the Pier module at 18:35 Moscow time on February 2 and were supposed to return at 01:15 on February 3. But there were problems after completing the installation of the module with bringing the antenna into working position.

During their stay in space, Misurkin and Shkaplerov took several photos.

Source: tass.ru

The astronauts faced a number of difficulties when dismantling the old receiver, which had been in space for 17 years. According to Shkaplerov, initially, when the Zvezda module was launched into orbit, it was not supposed to be dismantled in space. The astronauts barely unscrewed a number of nuts — it is inconvenient to work in this place of the station's skin and exits were not performed there earlier.

The longest exit in the history of world cosmonautics — 8 hours 56 minutes — was performed on March 1, 2001 by American astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms from the International Space Station.