Astronauts help move stalled rail car on station

In this photo provided by NASA-TV, American astronaut Scott Kelly returns to the International Space Station at the end of a spacewalk in which he and fellow American Timothy Kopra helped move a stalled rail auto back into place outside the space station, on Monday, Dec. 21, 2015.

Once they coax it to its new position on the station’s truss, it will be “latched in place and electrically mated to the complex”.

The shorter-than-usual spacewalk ended after three hours and 16 minutes, about half the duration of a regular outing.

As per the agency experts, everything during the spacewalk went as per plan, but still they said a huge risk is always involved in such tasks.

“This is a team effort”, Kelly said. The rail auto had gotten stuck about four inches from its intended latching point, and the issue needed to be resolved by Wednesday, when a Russian cargo ship is expected to reach the station.

“How’s the Earth look?” astronaut Mike Hopkins asked the pair from Ground Control in Houston.

A handout photograph made available by NASA showing Expedition 46 Flight Engineer Tim Kopra on the spacewalk.

The Progress cargo ship filled with food and supplies launched from Kazakhstan about four hours before the spacewalk began.

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

“I see motion!” Kelly said after the astronauts released the brake handles and a robotics officer in Mission Control sent a command to move the rail vehicle.

Once the problem was fixed, Kelly and Kopra turned their sights to other housekeeping tasks outside of the ISS. Kopra arrived at the space station less than a week ago; this is the second spacewalk of his career.

It was the 191st spacewalk in the history of building and maintaining the ISS.

British astronaut Tim Peake travelled to the ISS last week and will spend six months aboard the craft.