NASA - Shuttle set to leave station

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Shuttle

set to leave station

POSTED: 9:59 a.m. EST, December 19, 2006

 

NEW: Discovery to undock from space station at 5:09 p.m. ET Tuesday

• Spacewalkers fix orbiting lab's stuck solar wing

• Astronaut Robert Curbeam sets record during spacewalk

• Discovery to return to Earth on Friday

 

HOUSTON, Texas (AP)

-- Astronauts were scheduled to say goodbye to the space station Tuesday after

their latest and greatest success, a spacewalk completed with none of the

ground training they had for previous spacewalks, and with only a few days of

planning by engineers at Mission Control.

U.S. astronaut Robert Curbeam and Swedish astronaut

Christer Fuglesang of the European Space Agency worked for more than five hours

during a 6 1/2-hour spacewalk Monday to get the last section of a 115-foot-long

solar array folded up into a box at the international space station.

" You guys are superheroes! " astronaut Megan McArthur in

Mission Control told Discovery commander Mark Polansky and his crew.

The spacewalking pair used a scraper to try to get the

array unstuck, shook the panel and used pliers to tighten the wire that folds

it up.

It was a stop-and-go process with the spacewalkers

fiddling with the arrays and then astronauts inside the space station sending

remote-controlled commands to fold up the array with the words, " Ready,

ready, retract. "

Curbeam worked from the end of the space station's robotic

arm. His fourth trip outside the station during Discovery's visit set a record

for the most spacewalks in a single shuttle mission. His spacewalk also moved

him up to fifth place on the list of astronauts and cosmonauts with the most

time spacewalking.

Workers in Mission Control applauded when the final section fell into

the box, although a wire loop hung out. Curbeam worked about half an hour

longer to get it rolled back in and the box latched.

" There's just no replacing eyeballs and hands in space, "

said flight director John Curry. " It's another great day in space. "

The array was part of the space station's temporary power

source. The space agency had to retract it to make room for a newly installed

array that will be part of the space station's permanent power source.

During their 13-day mission, Discovery's astronauts have

rewired the station, installed a 2-ton, $11 million addition to the orbiting space

lab and replaced space station crew member Thomas Reiter of Germany with

American astronaut Sunita Williams, who will spend the next six months in

orbit.

Discovery will undock at 5:09 p.m. ET

Tuesday and return to Earth Friday. Because of supply limits, Discovery needs

to be on the ground by Saturday.

" There's never a bad day in space, " Polansky

said earlier this week when asked about the extra day.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/19/space.shuttle.ap/index.html

 

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