Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Max Suraev began the first spacewalk of the Expedition 22 mission when they opened the airlock hatches at 5:05 a.m. EST Thursday. The spacewalk is scheduled to last just under six hours with Kotov wearing the suit bearing the red stripes and Suraev wearing the suit bearing the blue stripes.

› Watch the spacewalk on NASA TV at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

During the spacewalk, the two cosmonauts will prepare the Mini-Research Module 2, known as Poisk, for future Russian vehicle dockings. Suraev and Commander Jeff Williams will be the first to use the new docking port when they relocate their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from the aft port of the Zvezda service module on Jan. 21.

This is the third spacewalk for Kotov, who made two spacewalks in 2007 totaling 11 hours and two minutes as an Expedition 15 flight engineer, and the first for Suraev.

Throughout the week, Kotov and Suraev completed a variety of tasks in anticipation of the spacewalk including resizing spacesuits, conducting routine spacesuit maintenance, configuring spacewalk equipment and conducting a suited "dry run" check Tuesday.

› Read more about Expedition 22 at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition22/index...
› View crew timelines at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/timelines/01_2010_tl.html