This
story was updated at 1:29 a.m. EDT.
HOUSTON --
Two spacewalkers performed a bit of heat shield surgery and wrestled an old
solar wing into submission outside the International Space Station (ISS)
Friday, as critical Russian computers were reactivated inside the orbital
laboratory.
STS-117
mission specialists Jim Reilly and Danny Olivas spent nearly eight hours
outside the station, using medical staples to fix a torn
heat shield blanket on the space shuttle Atlantis and tape-wrapped tools to
help furl a solar array atop the ISS.
“It’s
nice to see those blanket boxes flat,” Olivas said, referring to the
storage boxes for the solar array panels, known as blankets.
While the
astronauts worked outside, ISS Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and
flight engineer Oleg Kotov worked with flight controllers to restore four of
six command and navigation computers - two a piece - aboard the station’s
Russian segment. Engineers have been working
to recover the computers since they failed earlier this week.
The Russian
cosmonauts disconnected some of the system’s connectors from a suspect
switch, wrapped them in tape and rerouted them, NASA said. Because of the fix,
Reilly did not have to disconnect an unused power cable connector on the
station’s new Starboard
3/Starboard 4 truss segments as a troubleshooting measure, they added.
“Well
good news,” Russian Mission Control radioed the ISS crew.
“It’s good news that’s its working.”
Originally
slated to last 6.5 hours, the spacewalk began at 1:24 pm. EDT (1724 GMT) from
the station’s Quest airlock and ran and extra-long seven hours and 58
minutes to complete the tasks. It marked the third of four planned during the
STS-117 mission to deliver a new crewmember, trusses and starboard solar arrays
to the ISS.
Shuttle
blanket surgery
Wielding a
pack of medical
staplers pilfered from medical kits aboard Atlantis and the ISS, Olivas
secured a triangular flap of a protective blanket mounted to the
shuttle’s left Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) pod in an apparently
smooth repair.
The 4-inch
by 6-inch (10-centimeter by 15-centimeter) blanket corner tore loose from its
mooring during Atlantis’ June 8 launch. While the tear posed no risk to
the shuttle’s crew or their return to Earth, mission managers were
concerned the OMS pod’s underlying graphite-epoxy structure could be
damaged during reentry and require a lengthy repair.
Olivas used
his spacesuit-clad hands to pat down the upturned blanket, then stapled its sides
to adjacent material using two rows of surgical staples. He then drove 21 pins
through the blanket and into nearby heat-resistant tiles to anchor the blanket
corner and a nearby swatch.
“You
made that feel really easy,” Olivas told Mission Control after the fix.
“Hope it’s going to be good enough.”
While
Olivas repaired the blanket, Reilly replaced a water vent valve on the exterior
of the station’s Destiny laboratory with a hydrogen vent valve, which
will allow the activation of a U.S.-built oxygen generator later this year.
Solar
array furled at last
Reilly and
Olivas also helped furl the station’s only remaining solar array
extending from its mast-like Port 6 (P6) truss after three days of effort by
Atlantis’ STS-117 crew.
Retraction
efforts began in earnest during a Wednesday spacewalk and then continued with
Atlantis’ STS-117 mission commander Rick Sturckow overseeing efforts to
remotely furl the solar wing a day later.
Stowing the
array cleared the station’s new starboard solar wings to rotate and track
the Sun. It also primed the P6 truss, which was temporarily installed atop the
ISS in 2000, for relocation to the port-most side of the station on a later
shuttle flight.
The
truss’ port-reaching solar array was furled during a December 2006 shuttle
mission, the lessons from which eased the STS-117’s efforts, mission
managers said.
Friday’s
spacewalk marked the fifth orbital excursion for Reilly for a total of about 30
hours and 43 minutes. It was the second spacewalk for Olivas, bringing him up
to 14 hours and 13 minutes.
The
spacewalk also marked the 86th dedicated to ISS construction or
maintenance, as well as the 58th to begin from the station itself.
NASA is
broadcasting the space shuttle Atlantis' STS-117 mission live on NASA TV. Click here for mission updates and
SPACE.com's
video feed.
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