What was the “5 minute EVA”? What was the shortest-duration EVA ever?

Question

A comment to this answer makes the claim

humans are so impaired in space that their ability to repair anything is ridiculously low (hours of preparation and debriefing even for a five-minute EVA, and they're seriously exhausted)

Request for clarification showed that this wasn't meant to be hyperbole and that the information came from a "press article".

Keeping in mind that shuttle EVA time officially started when the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) was switched to internal power, and ended when it was switched back to Orbiter power¹, so IVA tool prep, donning, doffing, airlock pressurization and depressurization, etc, are excluded.

Compte tenu de cela, à quoi faisait référence l '«EVA de cinq minutes»? Était-ce l'EVA le plus court jamais vu? Sinon, quelle a été la plus courte EVA jamais réalisée?

(Il n'est pas nécessaire que ce soit une navette EVA, mais essayez d'exclure de la même manière tout le temps avant et après si possible)

¹ Règles de vol de la navette spatiale, Section A15-1, Définition du temps EVA

Answer 1

D'après ce que j'ai pu trouver, l'EVA la plus courte de l'histoire était aussi la première: la sortie dans l'espace d'Alexei Leonov sur Voskhod 2 à 12 minutes, 9 secondes.

Du côté américain, la sortie dans l'espace Gemini IV d' Ed White a duré 20 minutes.

Aucune de ces sorties dans l'espace n'était particulièrement fatigante au point où les astronautes ont essayé de retourner dans la cabine, car, contrairement aux EVA ultérieurs, aucune tâche difficile n'a été tentée par l'un ou l'autre. Leonov a eu du mal à rentrer dans le sas exigu parce que sa combinaison était raide et gonflée par une pression interne; il a dû utiliser une valve d'urgence pour dépressuriser partiellement sa combinaison afin de rentrer à l'intérieur. De même, lorsque White est revenu à Gemini 4, lui et McDivitt ont eu du mal à fermer l'écoutille et à le verrouiller correctement. Ainsi, ces deux EVA auraient pu être "épuisants", mais pas strictement à cause de la difficulté de travailler en EVA.

There have been a few "stand-up" EVAs, where a cabin was depressurized and a crewperson partially exited the spacecraft, including Mike Collins on Gemini 10, Buzz Aldrin on Gemini 12, and David Scott on Apollo 15; even these were each over 30 minutes.

Given the hours of preparation needed for an EVA, there would be little sense in planning a 5-minute excursion. A few have been cut short due to emergencies (notably Luca Parmitano's near-drowning in 2013), but as far as I know, none to the five-minute mark.

Answer 2

The second shortest spacewalk was performed by Michael Fincke and Gennady Padalka on June 24, 2004 on Expedition 9 at the ISS. There was a problem with Michael Fincke's oxygen tank, and they were forced to cut the EVA short. The total time of this EVA was 14 minutes and 22 seconds. Roughly 2 minutes longer than the first EVA by Alexei Leonev.

This is very likely the shortest EVA in modern spaceflight history.

Also worth mentioning: According to this NASA list of all spacewalks on the ISS since 1998, the shortest 'EVA' was 12 minutes (20 seconds shorter than Alexei Leonev) by Gennady Padalka and Michael Barratt in Expedition 20. However, they never left the Zvezda module and it was an IVA replacing the docking adapter. So this doesn't fit your criteria.

Answer 3

According to here, Russell Schweickart's EVA during Apollo 9 lasted 37 minutes. A mission timeline says the lunar module was depressurized at GET 072:45 and repressurized at 073:53, or 68 minutes. The timeline doesn't list the times that Schweickart's PLSS was disconnected from/reconnected to the LM.

Answer 4

Checking the Space Shuttle Extravehiclular Activities history provided by NASA, it appears the shortest Space Shuttle EVA was 3:07 (3 hours, 7 minutes) which occurred April 16, 1985 during the STS-51D TELSAT-I mission. The crew members involved in the EVA were David Griggs and Jeffrey Hoffman. An excerpt from the log is:

The mission was the 4th for Discovery (OV-103) and the payload deployed was a SYNCOM IV-3 Communications Satellite.

As mentioned by @Russell Borogove there were likely shorter pre-shuttle EVAs that occurred during Apollo and the lead-up programs. As far as the Shuttle Program goes, it appear 3:07 was the shortest.