This story
was updated at 2:25 p.m. EST.
Spacewalking
astronauts primed the International Space Station (ISS) for the upcoming move
of two massive modules Friday as they continued construction of their
high-flying laboratory.
Expedition
16 commander
Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko cleared a space shuttle
docking port for its planned Monday move to the end of the new
Harmony node during a nearly seven-hour spacewalk outside the ISS.
"You guys
did a great job," said Expedition 16 flight engineer Dan Tani, who
choreographed the extravehicular activity (EVA) from inside the ISS
The two
astronauts wrestled with tough bolts - one of which prevented the installation
of a new handrail - and tackled stubborn electrical cables which Whitson said
felt glued on at times.
"Looks
like, for the next EVA, we'll need one of those hydraulic jaws-of-life
machines," Tani said.
The
Expedition 16 crew will either attach or disconnect some 77 electrical and
cooling lines - half of them today - by the end of their spacewalk trio later
this month, NASA said.
The
astronauts were initially slated to perform today's spacewalk during NASA's
recent STS-120
shuttle mission to the ISS, but vital repairs to a torn solar wing delayed
the activity.
Busy
week ahead
Whitson and
Malenchenko stepped
outside the station's Quest airlock at 4:54 a.m. EST (0954 GMT) - a full hour
early - to begin the first
of three spacewalks planned for the next two weeks.
The spacewalks and two critical hardware relocations next
week will equip Harmony with a shuttle docking port, then perch the nearly 16-ton
hub to the front of Destiny. The docking port, known as Pressurized Mating
Adapter-2 (PMA-2), currently sits at the tip of Destiny and also must be moved.
"We have a very ambitious, very challenging, stage ahead of
us," NASA's lead ISS flight director Derek Hassmann told reporters after today's
spacewalk.
Harmony is an Italian-built module about the size of a
small school bus that is designed to serve as the docking point for European
and Japanese laboratories at the ISS. Astronauts installed the multi-port node
at a temporary spot during the STS-120 mission, but must move it to a permanent
berth before the European
Space Agency's Columbus lab can launch toward the station aboard NASA's
shuttle Atlantis on Dec. 6.
Hassmann said that whether the ISS will be ready for
Atlantis' launch, or need to ask shuttle officials to delay the orbiter's
STS-122 mission by a few days, is still uncertain.
"From my perspective, I'm taking it one day at a time,"
Hassmann said. "I would say today it's too early to say whether we'd be ready on
[December] sixth, the seventh or the eighth."
Once the station's PMA-2 docking port is attached to
Harmony on Monday using the outpost's crane-like robotic arm, the entire
assembly will be relocated to the front of Destiny on Wednesday. Two more
spacewalks, on Nov. 20 and Nov. 24, will follow to make final power and cooling
connections between Harmony and the ISS.
The Expedition 16 astronauts have agreed to work through
their Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 22 in a bid to ready the space station in
time to launch Columbus in December, mission managers have said.
Columbus's launch, as well as those of other
components built by NASA's ISS partner nations, has been delayed for years as
the U.S. agency recovered from the 2003 Columbia accident and improved shuttle
flight safety.
Friday's
spacewalk marked the 97th dedicated to space station maintenance or
construction. It also marked Whitson's second career spacewalk, for a total
time of 11 hours and 20 minutes working outside a spacecraft. Malenchenko made
his fourth spacewalk for a total of 24 hours and 12 minutes.
Protected
gloves
NASA's lead
spacewalk officer Tomas Gonzalez-Torres said that a plan to avoid spacesuit damage
by having Whitson and Malenchenko wear coverings known as "overgloves" over
their spacesuit gloves appeared to work well.
"There was
no damage to either one of the overgloves or the gloves themselves on this EVA,
which is great," Gonzalez-Torres said, adding that Malenchenko did describe a
slight layer separation on his overglove that appeared to be a manufacturing issue,
not damage.
Spacesuit
glove damage cut an August spacewalk short and astronauts now check their
gloves periodically to ensure they are safe to continue working outside the
ISS.
During
their six-hour, 55-minute spacewalk, Whitson and Malenchenko also replaced a
broken ISS circuit breaker box, removed an external light, retrieved an antenna
electronics box, and removed a foil-lined cover dubbed the "shower cap" from
the end of Harmony.
"I'm
looking through this window and all I can see is aluminum foil," said Tani of
the cover while the spacewalkers returned to the station's airlock. "It looks
like a turkey cooking in the oven."
"That would
be us!" joked Whitson.
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