On Monday, the first spacewalk of the shuttle Discovery's final space mission was interrupted due to a robotic system shutdown, which left spacewalker Stephen Bowen stranded with an 800-pound pump in his hands for almost half an hour.

According to the information shared by NASA, astronauts Steve Bowen and Alvin Drew had just finished the first task of the spacewalk on Monday when there was glitch in the robotic work station in the new seven-window cupola of the International Space Station (ISS).

With the shut down of a work station controlling the robot arm, at the two-hour mark, Bowen was left perched on a small platform at the end of the 58-foot robotic arm, which is essentially used for carrying spacewalking astronauts outside the ISS.

The shut down of the workstation immediately promoted the astronauts operating the arm inside the ISS to rush to a computer station in another room, with all their laptops, manuals, notes, et al.

Since it quite some time to get the second station working, the robotic arm remained motionless for almost a half-hour, during which Bowen stuck gripping the 5-by-4-foot broken cooling pump.

However, in spite of the holdup, Bowen and Drew were still wrapped up the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk after completing all their major chores, which chiefly included prep work for installing a new storage room at the station.