A suspected leaky valve on the International Space Station stalled the start of a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts for nearly an hour on Monday, forcing them to wait in bulky spacesuits until it was deemed safe to venture outside.

Veteran cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko were preparing to begin their space station spacewalk when the leak was detected during air pressure tests. Russian flight controllers at the station's Mission Control Center in Moscow asked the cosmonauts to stay put until the leaky valve could be isolated.

Padalka, the space station's commander, agreed.

"We're in no rush," Padalka radioed Mission Control in Russian, which was translated in a NASA broadcast.

Flight controllers spent almost an hour trying to isolate the leaky valve and monitoring air pressure inside the station's airlock and adjoining modules. Ultimately, they radioed good news to the spacewalkers the leak was resolved and it was safe to proceed. The cosmonauts welcomed the go-ahead.

"We're just hanging here and it's kind of boring," Padalka said.

At 11:37 a.m. ET nearly an hour later than the scheduled time of 10:40 a.m. ET the two cosmonauts finally opened the space station's airlock hatch and went to work.

Monday's spacewalk is due to 6.5 hours outside the International Space Station. Padalka is making his ninth career spacewalk during the excursion, and it's the fifth spacewalk for Malenchenko.

During the excursion, Padalka and Malenchenko plan to install new shields on the station to protect it from damage by tiny bits of space debris, and they'll move a hand-operated crane to a new location on the orbiting lab's hull.

Space news from NBCNews.com

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Spacewalkers take on fix-up tasks after delay