The
International Space Station (ISS) has new armor to guard against wayward
meteorites and orbital debris after a successful Wednesday spacewalk by two
Russian cosmonauts.
Expedition
15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov attached a dozen
metal plates to a Russian segment of the ISS and found signs of past damage in
some areas.
"We found
a dent or a hole from a meteorite," Yurchikhin told mission controllers in
Russia from his perch atop the station's Zarya control module. "It looks
like a bullet hole. I want to say the size is about five to six millimeters."
Yurchikhin
and Kotov installed the new debris shields and other equipment on the space
station's outer hull during a five-hour, 37-minute spacewalk that began at
10:23 a.m. EDT (1423 GMT) as the orbital lab flew 220 miles (354 kilometers)
above the horn of Africa.
Wednesday's
spacewalk marked the second in eight days for the Expedition 15 crew.
Yurchikhin and Kotov also installed orbital debris shields and performed other
tasks during a May 30 spacewalk. NASA
astronaut Sunita Williams, an Expedition 15 flight engineer, monitored her
spacewalking crewmates from inside the ISS during both spacewalks.
The Expedition
15 crew is now gearing up for the arrival of NASA's
STS-117 astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis, which is slated to launch towards
the ISS on June 8.
More
shields, new equipment
Yurchikhin
and Kotov attached 12 aluminum panels to a sensitive area of the space
station's Russian-built Zvezda service module -- which houses the ISS crew
quarters -- during their Wednesday spacewalk.
"Everything
is excellent," Yurchikhin said during the installation. "I guess
we're lucky."
The new
panels, along with five others installed by the Expedition 15 crew during the
May 30 spacewalk, give Zvezda additional protection against impacts from micrometeorites
and orbital debris. NASA officials have said that such micrometeorite and
orbital debris (MMOD) strikes represent a major risk to the ISS and NASA
shuttles in Earth orbit.
"The
number one risk for the shuttle is MMOD when it's on orbit," Kirk Shireman,
NASA's deputy ISS program manager, said before today's spacewalk. "It's
also that way for ISS, although the station was designed to live in a debris
environment."
Each of the
17 aluminum plates installed by Yurchikhin and Kotov during their two
spacewalks are about an inch (2.5 centimeters) thick and cover a two-foot by
three-foot (0.6- by 0.9-meter) patch of the ISS, NASA officials have said. They
join six other panels that were installed by ISS astronauts during a 2002 spacewalk.
In addition
to the new shields, Yurchikhin and Kotov mounted a Russian experiment dubbed
Biorisk to the station's exterior to study the effects of weightlessness on
microorganisms.
The cosmonauts
also ran a 43-foot (13.1-meter) Ethernet cable across the top of the station's
Russian-built Zarya control module as part of a computer network upgrade that
will, once complete, allow astronauts to control the outpost's Russian segments
from the U.S. modules, NASA officials said.
By the
numbers, Wednesday's spacewalk marked the 83rd excursion dedicated
to ISS construction or maintenance and the 55th to originate from
the orbital laboratory itself. It was also the 22nd excursion to
begin at the station's Pirs docking compartment.
More
spacewalks ahead
Both Yurchikhin
and Kotov now have two spacewalks, totaling of 11 hours and two minutes of
orbital work, under their belts. Yurchikhin will add to that experience during a
third spacewalk planned for the Expedition 15 mission.
But that
spacewalk, a U.S. excursion in NASA spacesuits, must wait until after the
upcoming STS-117 shuttle mission to the ISS, which will deliver American
astronaut Clayton Anderson to the orbital laboratory. Atlantis astronauts
will stage at least three spacewalks during their 11-day mission to install new
solar arrays and trusses to the space station's starboard side.
Anderson will
relieve Williams as an Expedition 15 crewmember and will participate in the
U.S. spacewalk with Yurchikhin.
"It's
so dynamic," Yurchikhin said of during today's spacewalk as he and Kotov
took pictures while resting between tasks. "It's just like an action
movie."
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