Astronauts aim to fix jammed rail vehicle during spacewalk

The unplanned space walk, some 250 miles above Earth, was necessary after astronauts were unable to fix the problem from inside the station.

The cause of the stall remains unclear, but “experts believe it may be related to a stuck brake handle”, according to ISS mission integration and operations manager Kenny Todd.

Kopra arrived for his second mission at the International Space Station last Tuesday. For Kelly, now in his eighth month aboard the space station, it was his third spacewalk, which NASA calls an extravehicular activity (EVA). NASA officials approved the mission Sunday, and the spacewalk began Monday at 7:45 a.m. EST.

Management of ISS decided that Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineer Tim Kopra will try to fix blocked rail platform with Canadarm2 robotic arm.

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

Finished with their work, the astronauts returned inside the space station more than three hours after the start of their spacewalk.

You can watch the spacewalk live on NASA TV.

The rail vehicle needed to be moved so a cargo ship filled with almost three tonnes of food and supplies could dock at the orbiting space lab. Progress 62 blasted off successfully from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:44 a.m. EST on Monday, Dec.21. The other four members aboard the ISIS are British astronaut Tim Peake and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko, Mikhail Kornienko, and Sergey Volkov.