Major Tim phones home from space – gets voicemail

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”.

British astronaut Tim Peake is to assist in a spacewalk conducted by two of his fellow crewmen on the International Space Station (ISS) today. The idea was to have everything in place before the Russian resupply spacecraft arrives and docks on Wednesday, said the release.

Most spacewalks are planned months in advance, but this one was arranged on Friday.

After quickly completing their primary objective for the spacewalk, Kelly and Kopra tackled several get-ahead tasks, NASA said.

“This is a team effort”, Kelly said.

“Good news! It appears to have reached the work site”, astronaut Mike Hopkins in Mission Control told the spacewalkers a short time later.

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

The brake is believed to have become stuck unexpectedly last week, and mission control in Houston has been unable to fix the problem robotically.

Four hours after the spacewalk began, the cargo ship launched from Kazakhstan to make its way toward the ISS.

The space walk was the third in Mr Kelly’s career and the second for Mr Kopra.

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.

Now they will have a final digital HD version for keeps on December 22 (which coincides with The Martian’s Blu-Ray release) along with Scott’s film collection which also includes Prometheus, Thelma & Louise, Exodus and Alien (that last one is another one they might want to pass on while in space).