This story was updated at 6:34 p.m. EST.
WASHINGTON -- NASA has a new U.S. spacewalking champion: Michael
Lopez-Alegria.
The veteran astronaut and International Space
Station (ISS) commander [image]
broke the American cumulative spacewalking record Thursday during the third
in a series of assembly-themed sessions for his Expedition 14 crew
[video
preview].
“It’s a nice day
outside,” Lopez-Alegria said near the spacewalk’s end. “Do I
have to go in?”
Lopez-Alegria spent six hours and 40
minutes working outside the ISS with Expedition
14 flight engineer Sunita
Williams, who herself holds
the record for the most spacewalking time by a female astronaut [image].
Highlighting their orbital
work was the jettison of two, 18-pound (eight-kilogram) thermal shrouds,
each larger than a king-size bed sheet and bundled into a lumpy garbage
can-sized mass [image].
The shrouds were no longer needed, with NASA flight controllers concerned that
the equipment they blanketed on the station’s Port 3 main
truss segment could overheat if the covers remained in place, mission
managers said.
“I don't think I could do it better than that,” Lopez-Alegria said after carefully tossing
the shrouds aft, below and slightly to starboard of the ISS on a path that
would not prove a future debris threat for the station. “On behalf of all the crewmembers who have trained for
this task, I say good riddance to those XPOP shrouds."
"Very nice,"
Williams said after the first shroud flew overboard on track. "I think
that was pretty sweet."
Mission managers said they
picked the shrouds’ trajectories carefully to ensure they burn up in
about 20 days or so and pose to return or impact risk to the ISS.
The U.S.
spacewalk champ
But it was at 12:16 p.m.
EST (1716 GMT) -- the three hour, 50 minute mark of today’s excursion
precisely -- when Lopez-Alegria surpassed NASA astronaut Jerry Ross to snag the
U.S. spacewalking title with a total of 61 hours and 22 minutes of spacesuit-ed
work [image].
Ross logged 58 hours and 32 minutes during nine spacewalks and seven
spaceflights, and topped the U.S.
spacewalker list since 2002 until today.
“If we made it look
easy or otherwise, it was thanks to a lot of people on the ground,”
Lopez-Alegria said as he thanked a long list of astronaut trainers, staff,
engineers and flight controllers.
Thursday’s ISS
assembly work marks the end of a three-part series of U.S. spacewalks
that have been strewn with new records. The Expedition 14 crew’s Jan. 31,
Feb.
4, and Feb. 8 spacewalks with another planned for Feb. 22.
“We’ve never
executed more than a single EVA at one time in a stage, meaning between shuttle
missions,” said Glenda Laws, NASA’s lead station spacewalk officer,
adding that a record five ISS spacewalks will be performed during the
Expedition 14 mission.
Derek Hassmann, said the crew’s
perseverance throughout the packed spacewalk schedule not only moved the ISS
assembly process forward, but paves the way for future station assembly plans.
“They met all my
expectations and more,” Hassman said of the
Expedition 14 crew. “The series of EVAs, I think,
have shown that we have an important new capability on the station.”
Lopez-Alegria
will have a chance to stretch his U.S. spacewalk lead on Feb. 22
during a Russian extravehicular activity (EVA) -- to be his 10th
trip outside a spacecraft in orbit -- with Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail
Tyurin to free a stuck cargo ship antenna.
But the NASA astronaut has long way
to go to catch up to cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov, who currently owns the
world’s spacewalking title with 16 spacewalks, 82 hours and 22 minutes of
spacesuit-ed work under his belt, space agency officials said.
At 29 hours and 17 minutes and four
career EVAs, Williams continues to lengthen her lead
as the top female spacewalker, a mantle she won during Sunday’s
spacewalk.
Orbital ISS assembly
Thursday’s
spacewalk began about a half-hour earlier than planned at 8:26 a.m. EST (1326
GMT), with Lopez-Alegria and Williams ahead or on schedule during their orbital
work.
"The
hatch is open,” Williams said. “Beautiful day.”
In addition to removing and tossing
out the unneeded thermal shrouds and some smaller covers, the spacewalkers also
deployed one of two foundation points for a future cargo carrier for ISS spare
parts and loosed a set of latches on the recently
installed Port 5 segment at the leftmost edge of the station's main truss.
The latter task primes the Port 5
truss [video]
for the relocation of the station’s older Port 6 solar array truss, which
currently rises like a mast near the orbital laboratory’s midpoint. The Port
6 truss will be hauled to the end of Port 5, its final location, during a
planned September
shuttle flight by NASA.
Thursday’s
spacewalk marked the 80th EVA to support ISS assembly or
maintenance, the 52nd staged from the station itself and the 32nd
to begin at NASA’s Quest airlock. It also marked the fourth spacewalk for
the Expedition 14 crew to date, counting Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria’s November 2006 EVA
in Russian Orlan spacesuits [video].
Lopez-Alegria, for his
part, was eager to remind himself of his surroundings while working outside his
spacecraft Thursday.
“When you get a chance, take a
look long the solar array, it’s a beautiful view,” Lopez-Alegria
told Williams as a blue Earth backlit
both astronauts at their perch on the station’s portside edge. “I
feel like I’m water skiing behind some huge boat, dragging my feet in the
water.”
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