US astronauts begin spacewalk

SpaceX postpones rocket launch until Monday

ORLANDO, Florida, Dec 21, (Agencies): Two American astronauts helped move a stalled rail car back into place outside the International Space Station on Monday, quickly finishing the primary job of an unplanned spacewalk before moving on to other housekeeping tasks.

NASA’s one-year spaceman, Scott Kelly, and astronaut Timothy Kopra took just a little more than a halfhour to release brake handles on the rail car and help guide it 4 inches (10 centimeters) back into place. The rail car needed to be moved so a cargo ship filled with nearly 3 tons of food and supplies could dock at the orbiting space lab on Wednesday.

“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 car.

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

The spacewalk more than 250 miles (400 kms) above Earth was just scheduled last Friday.

The rail car is part of the station’s mobile transport system, which is normally used to transport people and equipment, including the station’s big robot arm.

After engineers on the ground confirmed the rail car was latched in place, Hopkins told the spacewalkers, “It’s in a good config. Well done!”

With their primary task completed, Kelly and Kopra split up to work on separate tasks of routing cables along the space station. Kopra also retrieved some tools stored on the side of the station for a future spacewalk.

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

Hopkins praised the astronauts for performing the spacewalk on such short notice. “This is a team effort,” Kelly said. The Progress cargo ship filled with food and supplies launched from Kazakhstan about four hours before the spacewalk began.

It was the seventh spacewalk of the year.

Kelly is on a one-year mission that’s due to end in March. Kopra arrived Tuesday, launching from Kazakhstan with Russian and British colleagues.

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

During the three-hour spacewalk, the two men will attempt to lift the brake on the mobile transporter rail car, which carries the robotic arm from one location to another on the outside of the orbiting lab.

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

Progress

The astronauts plan to move the rail car a few inches and latch it in place, so it will not interfere with the arrival of the Russian Progress supply ship on Wednesday.

Two Americans floated outside the International Space Station on Monday morning to perform a spacewalk with the primary goal of freeing a rail car that was stalled outside the orbiting lab.

NASA’s one-year spaceman, Scott Kelly, and astronaut Timothy Kopra exited the space station’s hatch ahead of schedule and made their way toward the stuck rail car so they could release its brakes.

In Mission Control, astronaut Mike Hopkins cautioned them to avoid making accidental contact with the rail car since it wasn’t secured into its usual spot.

The spacewalk more than 250 miles above Earth was unplanned.

NASA managers wanted them to move the rail car so a cargo ship filled with almost three tons of food and supplies can dock on Wednesday.

Engineers believe a stuck brake handle is to blame. The rail car needs to move about four inches so it can be latched into place.

The mobile transport system is normally used to transport people and equipment, including the station’s big robot arm. It’s the seventh spacewalk of the year.

The spacewalk was planned for three hours, and the astronauts planned to take care of a few other tasks if time permits.

Kelly is three-quarters of the way into a one-year mission that’s due to end in March. Kopra arrived Tuesday, launching from Kazakhstan with Russian and British colleagues.

Meanwhile, an unmanned Russian cargo ship has lifted off on a journey to the International Space Station.

The Progress spacecraft blasted off Monday from Russia’s space launch complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and is to dock with the space station two days later. It is delivering 2.5 metric tons of fuel, water, food and other supplies.

Russian Mission Control said the ship has successfully entered its designated orbit just over nine minutes after the liftoff.

It was the maiden launch of a modified version of the Progress, which has been in service for more than four decades. The new version, called Progress-MS, is fully digital and features an improved docking system.

A Progress launch in April ended in failure, but the latest supply mission in October was successful.

SpaceX postponed until Monday its first rocket launch since an explosion after liftoff destroyed its unmanned Dragon cargo ship bound for the International Space Station six months ago.

After liftoff, SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket in an upright position on solid ground for the first time, a milestone it sees as key to making rockets as reusable as commercial airplanes one day.

The Falcon 9 rocket is now scheduled to launch at 8:33 pm Monday (0133 GMT Tuesday) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Californiabased company said.

Monday “has a 10 percent higher chance of a good landing. Punting 24 hours,” Internet tycoon Elon Musk announced on Twitter Sunday afternoon, several hours before its initially planned launch.

Several previous attempts at landing the rocket on a floating ocean platform have failed, but SpaceX says each try has taught them more about how to succeed in the future.

“If successful, this test would mark the first time in history an orbital rocket has successfully achieved a land landing,” SpaceX said in a statement.

While the landing is key to SpaceX’s plans, the primary goal of the mission is to deliver 11 satellites to low-Earth orbit for ORBCOMM, a global communications company.

Last month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — who also owns the rocket company Blue Origin — announced he had successfully landed his New Shepard rocket after a suborbital flight.