Spacewalking cosmonauts set up an antenna for tracking birds on Earth and sent a series of tiny satellites flying from the International Space Station on Wednesday. Russian Sergey Prokopyev used his gloved right hand to fling four research satellites into space. The first mini satellite safely tumbled away as the space station soared 250 miles above Illinois. By the time the fourth one was on its way 14 minutes later, the station was almost to Spain. Two were the size of a tissue box, while the other two were longer. With that quickly behind them, Prokopyev and Oleg Artemyev spent the next several hours installing the antenna for a German-led, animal-tracking project known as Icarus , short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space. The cosmonauts had to unreel, drag and connect long, white cables in order to provide power and data to the system. At one point, Artemyev had to pull out a sharp knife to deal with a twisted cable. “Can you give us some more difficult tasks please?” Artemyev joked as he routed the cables, a long and tedious chore. Published in Daily Times, August 17th 2018.