USA astronauts begin spacewalk to fix stalled rail vehicle

Two US astronauts floated outside the International Space Station on Monday in a hastily planned spacewalk to move a stuck rail auto before a Russian cargo ship reaches the outpost on Wednesday, NASA said.

The outing by Scott Kelly and Tim Kopra began at 7:45 am (1245 GMT), the USA space agency said.

The mobile transport system is normally used to transport people and equipment, including the station’s big robot arm. We’d popped out for about an hour to see our daughter who lives nearby, came home to an answer phone message, “Hello, this is your son from the International Space Station”.

NASA’s one-year spaceman, Scott Kelly, and astronaut Timothy Kopra took just over a half-hour to release brake handles on the rail auto and help guide it 10cm back into place.

Monday’s spacewalk was the seventh one this year, but operated under significantly less planning than normal.

The rail auto needed to be moved so a cargo ship filled with almost three tonnes of food and supplies could dock at the orbiting space lab.

The problem hit after the transporter moved only four inches along the truss and then jammed. Kelly routed a second pair of cables in preparation for International Docking Adapter installment work to support US commercial crew vehicles.

The ISS Progress 62 resupply mission launched at 3:44 a.m. EST this morning (2:44 p.m. Baikonur time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Kelly was the lead spacewalker.

Commander Kelly has been at the space station since March, and Kopra arrived just six days ago with Britain’s first professional astronaut, Tim Peake.

Kelly has now accrued over 18 hours in spacewalk operations, while his counterpart for today’s mission, the newly-arrived Tim Kopra, has a little over eight hours under his belt.

The spacewalk more than 250 miles above Earth was unplanned.