US Astronaut Briefly Stranded During Spacewalk

(AFP) - Two US astronauts on Monday wrapped up the first spacewalk of the Discovery shuttle mission at the International Space Station after a robotic arm breakdown left one of them stranded for almost 20 minutes.

"How much longer?" asked veteran astronaut Steve Bowen after the Robotic Work Station in the ISS's Cupola, the central command post for robotic operations, shut down two hours into the walk.

Robotic arm operators Scott Kelly and Mike Barratt hustled to another work station in the Destiny Lab and were able to continue their spacewalk support without rebooting the failed system, NASA said.

"All they did was pause," NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said. "It wasn't a big deal. He [Bowen] just relaxed on the end of the robotic arm."

The delay lasted 15-to-20 minutes, Herring said.

Bowen and fellow US spacewalker Alvin Drew stayed calm and got plenty of work done after the robotic arm failure, ending the 6.5-hour excursion with a lighthearted experiment to bottle some outer space for Japan.

NASA played the song "Message in a Bottle" by The Police to serenade the two Americans floating outside the ISS as astronaut Drew opened and then recapped a metal cylinder that had been signed by many astronauts.

The space capsule will return to Earth to go on display, as part of a joint effort by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, to capture the vacuum of space.

The spacewalk was Bowen's sixth and the first for Drew, an African-American astronaut who became the 200th person to walk in space with Monday's trip.

The pair also took care of some technical matters ahead of the installation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module, a spare closet area that will stay at the ISS and give extra space for storage and experiments.

A second spacewalk is planned for Wednesday.

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