Washington: Two Russian astronauts, who took a record-breaking seven and a half hour spacewalk outside the ISS, were unsuccessful at installing cameras that would allow people to watch the Earth spin from the comfort of their house.
The spacewalk by Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazansky was the third in a week at the orbiting laboratory. US astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins had two spacewalks on Saturday and Tuesday to remove and replace a faulty cooling pump, Fox News reported. The Russians` task was shelved after a Russian flight control team outside Moscow was not able to receive telemetry data from the video cam. Vancouver-based UrtheCast launched the cameras with the Russian`s aid into orbit on November 25.
Once calibrated, the cameras are going to start beaming images, and an ordinary web surfer would be able to see the Earth in space with a delay of only 45 minutes to a couple hours at the most.