NASA astronauts have successfully completed their first of three spacewalks that will prepare the International Space Station to receive Boeing's and SpaceX's commercial space taxis transporting crews to the space station.

Astronauts from Expedtion 42, Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts, successfully conducted a six hour and 41 minute spacewalk on the ISS to install docking adapters crucial for the docking of future commercial flight vehicles. The spacewalk was completed by Wilmore and Virts at 2:26 P.M. EST February 21 after a repressurization of the Quest airlock.

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Prior to this, they installed a series of power cables and data cables at the front end of the Harmony module and the Pressurized Mating Adapter-2 as they routed 340 feet of cable.

According to NASA, this cable routing work is a pivotal part of the reconfiguration of systems and modules. It will eventually allow and support the delivery of new docking adapters for the commercial crew vehicles that will be used later this decade to deliver crews to the orbital lab.

On February 25, Wilmore and Virts will again venture out to deploy two more cables on the ISS and lubricate and repair the space station's robotic arm.

In the history of spacewalks at the ISS, astronauts have now clocked a total of 1,159 hours and eight minutes conducting maintenance, assembly and repairs from 185 spacewalks.

NASA has awarded multi-billion dollar contracts to private space agencies Boeing and SpaceX to develop, conduct test flights and prepare space capsules that can transport astronauts to the ISS, much like a taxi from Earth.

SpaceX is now developing and upgrading its spacecraft, the Dragon V2 passenger space vehicle that should be ready for an unmanned first test flight to the ISS in late 2016. A manned test flight is also set for 2017.

On the other hand, Boeing is also set to dock an unmanned CST-100 test flight vehicle at the space lab in April 2017.

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