Russian Cosmonauts make major move in ISS spacewalk: Install chip test, toss old camera

Two Russian cosmonauts have safely returned inside the International Space Station (ISS) following a productive spacewalk.

This Thursday’s spacewalk marked the second one for Expedition 73 and the 276th overall to help build and maintain the ISS since 1998.

They had opened the hatch to begin the spacewalk at 1:10 p.m. EDT on Thursday, October 16, 2025.

The duo from Roscosmos (Russia's federal space corporation) re-entered the Poisk module airlock and sealed the hatch, wrapping up the outing after 6 hours and 9 minutes.

Ryzhikov and Zubritsky set up the drum-shaped device, connected power cables, and attached a replaceable cassette.

After finishing the main task, the two Russian cosmonauts went to the Zvezda module (it's a Russian-built Service Module, that provides propulsion, power, and docking ports for Russian spacecraft like Soyuz and Progress).

They removed and discarded an old HD TV system from a Canadian commercial setup.

Zubritsky stood on the end of the European Robotic Arm and threw the camera away toward the back of the station so it wouldn’t hit the ISS again.

It was Zubritsky’s debut EVA (extravehicular activity), while it was Ryzhikov’s second, bringing his total spacewalk time to 12 hours and 57 minutes across both outings.

The experiment aims to show how to create ultra-thin materials in space's microgravity, ones too delicate to make reliably on Earth, and apply them in semiconductors.