HOUSTON - Astronauts aboard the International
Space Station (ISS) said today that they are ready for any repair work needed
outside the orbital laboratory, even as NASA delayed a planned spacewalk in
order to fix a torn solar wing.
The problems
in space regard the orbital laboratory's solar power-generating equipment:
A solar wing on the space station's port-side that ripped during deployment
yesterday, followed by a potentially damaged set of solar-array-orienting gears
on the starboard side.
Pamela
Melroy, commander for the STS-120 space shuttle
mission, said her seven-astronaut crew is ready to help.
"I
think that it's just welcome to spaceflight. You never know what's going to
happen every morning when you wake up," Melroy said of the evolving trouble
in space. "We feel confident that whatever comes we're going to able to
handle it."
Space
station commander for the Expedition 16 mission Peggy
Whitson expressed her confidence in NASA's ability to deal with unexpected
changes.
"NASA's
a very can-do organization and if there's a way to do it, we will figure out a
smart way ... to make it happen," Whitson said during the joint space
shuttle and station crew conference this morning. "We're all up here ready
to support."
Evolving
plans
Mission
controllers said this morning that they're scrapping Thursday's original
spacewalk plans and delaying it to devise a fix for the torn solar array, which
astronauts might carry out during the fourth of five planned spacewalks for the
15-day space shuttle mission.
"We're
going to change the plan for the next couple of days," NASA astronaut Tony
Antonelli, a spacecraft communicator, told Melroy from mission control. Antonelli
said the 6.5-hour spacewalk will happen either Friday or Saturday, hinging on
how quickly mission managers can devise a new plan.
"The
content will be solar
array wing stuff," Antonelli said of spacewalk procedures to inspect
or possibly repair recent damage to the Port 6 (P) truss segment's 4B solar
array wing.
Spacewalker
Scott Parazynski said he is eager to help remedy the ripped solar wing, which
is attached to a 35,000-pound (15,875-kilogram) Port 6 (P6) truss he helped
reattach to the space station with Doug Wheelock yesterday morning.
"It
really depends on what the root cause is," Parazynski said of the 2.5-foot
(0.76-meter) rip in the 4B solar wing. "We have trained quite a bit on the
flight simulator in Houston ... on the numerous contingencies that we could
affect on the solar array wings. But I'm not sure if they're applicable to this
situation."
Solar
array quick fix?
Although
the partially-deployed, torn wing is generating 97 percent of its
fully-deployed ability, mission managers said its structural integrity is a
concern.
NASA
spokesperson James Hartsfield said mission managers are discussing two options
to reach the torn solar wing: one is to put a spacewalker on the end of the
space station's arm lengthened by the space shuttle's orbital boom sensor
system (OBSS).
"The
other is to retract the array to within reach of the astronauts,"
Hartsfield said. Spacewalking astronauts used such a procedure to help fix a
solar array during the STS-117 mission, ISS program manager Mike Suffredini
said, but noted that getting in reach of the recent tear may be tricky.
"We're
going to have these things ... to where we can get to it," Suffredini said
of the damaged array. Because the space station's grapple fixture doesn't match
the one found on the end of the OBSS, however, Suffredini said he wasn't sure
the astronaut-on-an-arm plan would work.
"My
guess is you'll hear about us talking about ... retracting the arrays to try and
get them in reach," he said.
Whatever
approach might be used to rescue the solar wing, Hartsfield said mission
managers might revise the fifth and final EVA of the mission to continue with a
workaround for the technical issue.
On Nov. 7,
the space shuttle and Discovery and its seven-astronaut crew are slated to
return to Earth. The original 14-day mission has been extended once to 15 days,
and NASA officials said the crew has enough supplies on board to last another
two days docked with the space station.
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