Russian astronauts' spacewalk disrupted by spacesuit issue

MOSCOW, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Two Russian astronauts ended their spacewalk earlier than planned on Wednesday as one of them had a battery issue with his spacesuit, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos said.

Cosmonauts Oleg Artemiev and Denis Matveev, members of the 67th long-term expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), closed the exit hatch of the Poisk small research module at 20:54 Moscow time (1754 GMT), completing their spacewalk that lasted 4 hours and 1 minute.

According to the plan, work overboard the ISS should last 6 hours and 44 minutes.

Due to a drop in battery voltage in the spacesuit, Artemiev returned inside the Poisk module and connected the spacesuit to the onboard power supply, and Matveev also returned safely inside the station, Roscosmos said in a statement.

During the spacewalk, the Russian astronauts continued to prepare for the work of the European Robotic Arm (ERA) and they installed two elbow cameras on the ERA and dismantled the launch ring from it.

"The astronauts are in good health. Work in progress will be completed during the next spacewalks," Roscosmos said.