Astronaut takes spacewalk right before setting US record

NASA’s yearlong spaceman, Scott Kelly, is taking his first spacewalk just hours before setting a new U.S. flight record.

Kelly and Kjell Lindgren floated out of the International Space Station on Wednesday morning. They’ll grease the station’s big robot arm, route cables, remove insulation from an electronic switching unit and cover an antimatter detector.

At 12:05 a.m. EDT early Thursday, Kelly will break the American record for NASA’s longest single space shot. That 215-day record – more than seven months – was set in 2007.

Kelly has been living on the orbiting lab since March. He’ll remain there until March 2016. Russian Mikhail Kornienko is also part of the one-year experiment, although it will fall shy of the 14-month world record held by a fellow cosmonaut.

Lindgren is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado State University and University of Colorado.