MOSCOW. Aug 3 (Interfax-AVN) - The crew of the International Space Station have completed their spacewalk ahead of schedule and are returning to the station, an Interfax correspondent reported from the Mission Control Center.
Crew commander Gennady Padalka has entered the ISS and NASA astronaut Michael Fincke will follow soon.
The spacewalk began at 10:58 a.m. Moscow time (658 GMT). It was supposed to end at 4:56 p.m. (1256 GMT) but the men fulfilled their mission ahead of the planned schedule.
"The crewmembers have successfully returned to the station, they feel great," a mission control official said.
"The planned operations have been successfully completed. They were carried out in 4.5 hours rather than the planned six hours," the official said.
The ISS crewmembers were to replace and service various parts of the station's surface. They replaced the hardware for the Kromka (Edge) experiment which involves studying the impact made by jet engine pollutants on the station's surface.
In addition, the two astronauts dismantled the hardware for the experiment Platan (Plain tree) which studies the composition and spectrums of galactic space rays that may affect the crew's radiation safety.
The men also adjusted the receptacles to which the first European cargo spacecraft ATV will be docked after it is launched in 2005.
The station remained unmanned for about six hours because both its crewmembers were engaged in extravehicular activities.
The ISS briefly lost altitude because of the overload of three U.S. gyros maintaining the station's standard altitude. Engineers remedied the situation quickly, however, and the spacewalk continued.
Tuesday's spacewalk was the second made by the members of the ninth ISS expedition crew. The next one is scheduled for September.