This photo dated March 30, 2022 released by Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service shows the International Space Station, photographed by the crew of a Russian Soyuz MS-19 spaceship after undocking from the station. (PHOTO / AP)

VLADIVOSTOK – Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin have successfully returned to the International Space Station (ISS) after completing a spacewalk of nearly seven hours, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos said on Friday.

The spacewalk began at 17:24 Moscow time (1424 GMT) on Thursday, with the cosmonauts installing high-speed radio transmission equipment on the Zvezda module. They also dismantled old equipment and conducted scientific experiments.

Prokopyev and Petelin also removed the Seismoprognoz experiment equipment for ecological monitoring and took an experiment tablet from the Impact experiment studying pollutant emissions. They cleaned the station's windows and retrieved samples exposed to space conditions.

READ MORE: Space agency: Smoke detected in Russian module on space station

Prokopyev has performed extravehicular activities seven times, and Petelin five times.