NASA - Spacewalkers rewiring orbiting lab

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Spacewalkers

rewiring orbiting lab

POSTED: 3:18 p.m. EST, December 14, 2006

 

HOUSTON, Texas

(AP) -- U.S. astronaut Robert Curbeam and Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang

of the European Space Agency stepped outside for their second spacewalk on

Thursday.

The spacewalkers' task -- switch the space station from

its old, temporary power source to its brand-new one -- a pair of solar arrays

that were delivered in September. The job involved unhooking three dozen

electrical hoses and reconnecting them.

The spacewalk is scheduled to last six hours.

Before the start of the spacewalk, NASA flight controllers

on the ground powered down sections of the station that used those hoses so

that electricity was not flowing through them when the astronauts touched them.

For a short time, NASA lost some of the redundancy it

likes to have in its systems.

Half of the lights in the station's U.S. laboratory went

dark. Cameras at the station stopped working and some ventilation ducts were

turned off. Communication between the U.S. and Russian sides of the space

station was cut off.

Even a smoke detector was turned off. Mission Control, as a precaution,

asked astronaut Nicholas Patrick if he smelled smoke. He said no.

The spacewalk requires careful choreography. Fuglesang

plans to work in an area called " the rat's nest " because it is a

tight corner jammed with power hoses.

A third spacewalk set for Saturday will repeat the

rewiring job, but on the flip side of the station's U.S. segment.

NASA also considered a fourth spacewalk in which

astronauts could manually fold up an old solar array that failed to retract

fully by remote control on Wednesday.

The accordion-like 115-foot array, which had provided temporary power to

the space station, retracted about halfway -- still enough to

allow the new pair of solar arrays to rotate.

The half-retracted array is structurally stable and poses no risks in

its current configuration. NASA could ask the space station

residents to perform a spacewalk after Discovery returns to Earth in a week, or

it may find a potential solution using the remote control that was commanding

the retraction.

NASA managers expect to make a decision within the next

couple of days.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/14/space.shuttle.ap/index.html

NASA dasha: Ju/Ve/Ra/Ra/Me till December 15,

at 19:58 GMT. Then, Ju/Ve/Ra/Ra/Ke till December 17, at 02:40 GMT (a critical period).

 

 

Launch 9/12/2006, dasha: Me/Ra/Mo till December 16.

Then, Me/Ra/Ma (a critical period).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.15.18/586 - Release 13.12.2006 18:13