Two Russian astronauts went for a walk outside the International Space Station to finish a camera installation that was left incomplete last month. With one camera installed and looking good, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazankiy were stumped with the second camera was unable to provide any data to ground controllers.  This marks the second problematic attempt after the one post-Christmas failed.

“I put everything in place as it used to be, maybe even better,” Ryazanskiy radioed. “I think it’s much better.” Ryazankiy called to ground control over radio.

“Sergey, don’t overdo it there,” Russian Mission Control said, warning him not to damage the connectors. The spacewalk ended with the problem unresolved, six hours and eight minutes after it began.

The two Russian astronauts were able to get one of the commercially provided cameras installed and running. This chore required many powerful electric connections. This first installation was the high-definition camera, which also was also part of an installation attempt during a post-Christmas spacewalk. Ground control received no data then, and in this newest installation, the same problem exists for the medium-resolution camera.

The space and control team were able to trace the problem from the first installation attempt to indoor cabling. The spacewalkers had to haul all the equipment back inside the Space Station. Everyone thought the problem had been remedied for the second installation attempt.

The first installation attempt lasted for for eight hours, during which time Ryazanskiy and Kotov had to put off other Space Station maintenance tasks, which they were just now able to finish on Monday.

Russian flight controllers outside Moscow directed Monday’s 260-mile-high (420-mile-high) operation. Meanwhile the rest of the space team, made up of one Japanese, two American and another Russian astronaut — kept up from inside on the camera installation.

UrtheCast Corp is a Canadian company that owns the cameras and is in charge of distributing the cameras’ photos. UrtheCast plans to sell images and post near-real-time video on its website, which customers would want for environmental and humanitarian purposes.

The company made a deal with the Russian Space Agency regarding the cameras, which were launched into space in November of last year.

The Russian Space Agency and UrtheCast will determine from inside the space station what the problem is with the medium-resolution camera. UrtheCast expects the system should be operational by summer.