Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev successfully completed the spacewalk as part of the Russian space program. The principal task of EVA-45A was to inspect the outside surface of the International Space Station and habitation module of Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft.
Exit hatch of the Pirs (CO1) docking module was opened at 18:59 Moscow time on December 11 and closed by the cosmonauts who returned aboard the space station at 02:44 Moscow time on December 12. The total duration of the Russian crew’s sojourn outside of the International Space Station was 7 hours and 45 minutes. The cosmonauts’ spacewalk and their extravehicular activities were broadcasted live. Spacewalk 45A was narrated from the Mission Control Center by the cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Alexander Poleshchuk, test engineer of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporations’ Space Flight Center Artem Knyazev, and representatives of the Cosmonaut Training Center Dmitry Zubov and Oleg Blinov.