Two US astronauts have floated outside the International Space Station in a hastily planned spacewalk to move a stuck rail car before a Russian cargo ship reaches the outpost.
Station commander Scott Kelly and newly arrived flight engineer Timothy Kopra were due to spend about three and a half hours on a spacewalk on Monday to latch the stalled car into a parking spot along the station's exterior truss.
The car serves as a mobile base for a Canadian-built robotic crane to move rails outside the station, a $US100 billion ($A140 billion) research laboratory that flies about 400km above Earth.
The rail car jammed about 10cm short of its intended latching point last Wednesday, blocked by a crew equipment cart that was left with its brake on.
Kelly and Kopra fixed the stuck rail car in 15 minutes, leaving them time to tackle work to prepare the station for new modules, mission commentator Rob Navias said from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Russia, one of 15 nations that own and operate the station, plans to launch a new research laboratory, while the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is preparing to install docking ports for new commercial space taxis that are slated to begin flying in 2017.
NASA usually spends months planning spacewalks, but Monday's was just arranged over the weekend.
Kopra arrived at the station six days ago with Britain's first professional astronaut, Timothy Peake, and Russia's Yuri Malenchenko. Kopra and Kelly released the brake handle during the spacewalk, freeing up the mobile transporter, Navias said.
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress cargo ship blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is due to reach the station on Wednesday.
Share
