Russian cosmonauts start 6-hour space walk

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov began a space walk outside the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday, according to Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos. The space walk started at 18:31 Moscow time (1431 GMT) and would last about six hours, said the agency in a statement. The cosmonauts, wearing Russian-made Orlan-MK computerized space suits, are going to remove a mechanical cargo arm from the ISS' Pirs docking module and place it on the Poisk scientific module. They also planned to set up additional anti-meteorite shields on the Zvezda module and conduct some other works if time permits. The current ISS crew consists of six members, including Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoli Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko from Russia, Donald Pettit and Daniel Burbank from NASA and Andre Kuipers from the European Space Agency.