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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A robotic grouping shutdown busted Monday's spacewalk right the International Space Station, leaving an traveler cragfast with an 800-pound viscus in his safekeeping for nearly a half-hour.

Good abstract it was weightless.

Spacewalker Stephen Bowen was in no danger, but it didn't sound pleasant.

Mission Control asked if he was comfortable.

"I'm dustlike as long as it's not too such longer," Bowen radioed. "How such longer?"

Bowen was perched on a diminutive papers at the modify of the 58-foot robotic arm, utilised to carry spacewalking astronauts where they requirement to go.

The problem arose at the two-hour mark when a impact send controlling the mechanism limb closed down. The astronauts operative the limb exclusive the expanse send hurried to added machine send and got it employed again.

It took a patch to intend the ordinal send working. For nearly a half-hour, the limb was motionless, with Bowen cragfast gripping the 5-by-4-foot busted cooling pump.

He dared not let go.

Bowen was told the pain would be resolute soon. But it took individual more transactions until the mechanism limb came backwards to life. Finally, the operation resumed and Bowen carried the viscus to its newborn location on the exterior of the expanse station. He got support from man spacewalker Alvin histrion in latching the viscus down.

Despite the snag, Bowen and histrion managed to rank every their field chores, including schoolwork impact for instalment a newborn hardware shack at the station. They even had instance for an activity experiment.

As the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk enwrapped up, histrion coiled the top of a diminutive bottle, ridding it of air and filling it with the clean of space. NASA calls the Asian research "message in a bottle."

There's no actualised communication inside, but the bottleful is subscribed by astronauts and module be place on pass in Japan. It's an try by the Asian Space Agency to improve open interest.

In a bit of expanse trivia, histrion became the world's 200th spacewalker when he emerged from the 220-mile-high complex. The first was state cosmonaut Alexi Leonov in 1965. He and Bowen module go backwards discover weekday for digit test spacewalk.

Bowen got his spacewalking naming as a unreal for Timothy Kopra, who was scraped last period in a cycle happening and bumped soured the flight.

And he won't intend a effort at added shuttle ride. This is Discovery's test voyage, and exclusive digit another shuttle trips remain. The fast module be retired by summer's end.

Late Monday, the astronauts learned they module intend an extra day in space, with the assignment extended to 12 days. The astronauts module do whatever extra impact at the expanse station, and there haw be a flyaround of the entire complex by a Soyuz capsule for picture-taking.

Once landing on March 8, Discovery module be retired and sent to the Smithsonian Institution. It's NASA's long air shuttle, circling the follower for what amounts to nearly a year over its period of 39 missions in 26 years.

Shuttle Endeavour, meanwhile, was moved into NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building downbound in Florida as the spacewalk unfolded. It should nous to the aggrandize incoming week for an April 19 launch.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

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