US Astronauts Begin Spacewalk To Fix Stalled Rail Car

The vehicle is not in its usual spot and hence Mike Hopkins, another astronaut at the Mission Control warned Kelly and Kopra from accidentally contacting the MT.

Repairs began at around 12.45pm, about half an hour ahead of schedule, and are expected to last at least three hours.

The craft’s Mobile Transporter rail auto stalled after being moved to a new location by Mission Control in Houston.

The team will try to move it a few inches into a new position, where it will be latched into place, then connected up electrically to the station.

The supply ship will be loaded with 5,753 pounds supplies, propellants and equipment and will dock at the Russian Pirs module of the space station.

Today’s space station fix will mark the third career spacewalk for Kelly and the second for Kopra, who only just arrived at the International Space Station last week aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

NASA engineers suspect a stuck brake handle is what stalled the Mobile Transporter, but need Kelly and Kopra to manually free the railcar and secure it in place.

The robotic cargo ship, called Progress 62, is scheduled to launch toward the space station from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday at 3:44 a.m. EST (0833 GMT). NASA officials approved the mission Sunday, and the spacewalk began Monday at 7:45 a.m. EST.

With their primary task completed, Kelly and Kopra split up to work on separate tasks of routing cables along the space station.

The surprise spacewalk next week will be the 191st dedicated to space station assembly or fix.

Kopra arrived at the station six days ago with Britain’s first professional astronaut, Timothy Peake, and Russia’s Yuri Malenchenko. They joined Kelly and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov, who were already aboard.