Two U.S. astronauts spent nearly seven hours floating outside of the International Space Station Saturday to start creating parking spots for two commercial space taxis. Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, 52, and Terry Virts, 47, set out this morning on their first planned spacewalk, and they plan to take two more during the next eight days.

Commander Wilmore and Virts ran 103 meters of cable as part of reconfiguring the space station to prepare docking adapters. They were working to install six cables to a docking port on the station’s Harmony module, the site where space shuttles previously berthed. The adapters will be compatible with spacecrafts by SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, and Beoing Co, which were both selected by NASA for their commercial crew transport program.

By March 1, the station will be equipped with a communications station for the two spacecrafts, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST 100, and 764 feet of new cabling. Karina Eversly, lead spacewalk official, said at a press conference Wednesday that this will be “the most complicated cable-routing task” to be completed in International Space Station history.

All of the spacewalks this month are dedicated to remodeling the space station. The first walk was the station’s initial step toward preparing for space taxis, which are set to arrive in 2017.

The United States has depended on Russia to aid in station crew transportation since 2011, according to Reuters. However, the United States is planning to become more independent. NASA explained that the first U.S. crew craft test flight will not happen until late 2016, but the $100 billion station must undergo significant changes in order to accommodate the new capsules.

NASA is also planning to relocate a module using the station’s robot arm to clear space for another berthing port on Harmony. The station’s operations manager Kenneth Todd said at the news conference that the station is doing “a lot of reconfiguration” in an effort to bring it “into this next phase.”