ORLANDO, Fla.—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 half-hour to release brake handles on the rail car and help guide it four inches back into place. The rail car needed to be moved so a cargo ship filled with nearly three 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 above Earth was unplanned. NASA managers only scheduled it late last week.
The mobile transport system is normally used to transport people and equipment, including the station’s big robot arm.
