posted 08-17-2017 05:25 PM               

Russian cosmonauts on spacewalk deploy nanosatellites to honor Sputnik

Two cosmonauts stepped outside the International Space Station for a seven-hour spacewalk on Thursday (Aug. 17), in part to deploy three small satellites in tribute to the dawn of the space age 60 years ago.

Fyodor Yurchikhin, commander of the Expedition 52 crew, and Sergey Ryazanskiy, both of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, opened the hatch to the station's Pirs airlock at 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT), starting the extravehicular activity (EVA).