HOUSTON —
Astronauts are preparing to venture outside of the International Space Station
(ISS) later today to install its new Japanese laboratory and attempt to clean
grit out of a gummed up solar wing joint.
Spacewalkers
Mike Fossum and Ron Garan are preparing to suit up and head outside at 11:32
a.m. EDT (1532 GMT) today, or earlier, if they get ahead of schedule. They have
been camping out since Monday night in the station’s Quest airlock to prepare
today’s excursion, the first of three planned during their STS-124
construction flight to the ISS.
“It’s one
big happy spaceship now,” said Matt Abbott, lead flight director for
Discovery’s mission Monday shortly after the shuttle arrived
at the station. “It’s great to have the Kibo pressurized module part of the
International Space Station. All we have to do now is to install it tomorrow.”
Discovery’s
seven astronauts are delivering a new crewmember to the station along with its the
newest and largest addition — the tour bus-sized main room of the
Japanese-built Kibo laboratory.
The two
spacewalkers - Fossum a veteran spacewalker and Garan a first-timer in space —
plan to spend about seven hours outside the station. Fossum, the lead
spacewalker, will be identifiable as the one wearing a spacesuit with red
stripes.
“Our
biggest task on EVA 1, our first spacewalk, is really preparing the space
station to receive the Japanese module,” Fossum said in a preflight NASA
interview. “There’s some covers and launch locks we have to pull off... All
these things have to be done manually and so really we’re the blue collar
help.”
By the end
of the spacewalk the new room should be moved out of Discovery’s payload bay
and attached to its new perch on the station.
Busy day
But before
Fossum and Garan can deliver Kibo, the spacewalkers must first retrieve a vital
sensor-tipped heat shield inspection boom, which was left for them by a
previous shuttle crew because Discovery’s payload bay was too full with the
massive Kibo lab to fit the extra 50-foot (15-meter) pole.
The
astronauts also plan to inspect the damage on the station’s clogged
solar wing joint, and test tools and techniques for cleaning out the debris
lodged inside it.
Known as a
Solar Alpha Array Rotary Joint (SARJ), the massive gear is designed to rotate
the station’s outboard solar wings like a paddlewheel to keep them facing the
sun to maximize power generation. But the starboard gear has been hobbled by
metallic grit, which has damaged its rotating ring and caused odd power spikes
and vibrations that were first detected last October.
From inside
the space station, STS-124 pilot Ken Ham will serve as the spacewalk
choreographer, instructing the two men outside and making sure they stay on
track.
“My role in
that team is to be the person on the inside of the shuttle that helps conduct
the spacewalk in a real time sense,” Ham said before the flight. “That, I’ve
learned over the last few months, is a really fun, rewarding job. It’s a chance
to be flexible and use the assets you have in real time to try to coordinate
getting a maximum amount of efficiency out of Mike and Ron.”
Mission
specialists Karen Nyberg, Akihiko Hoshide and Greg Chamitoff will also be
helping out from inside the ISS by operating the space station and shuttle
robotic arms. Later in the mission after Kibo’s arm is deployed, Nyberg is
expected to become the first person to operate three different robotic arms in
space.
First
spacewalk
This
spacewalk will also be a trial run for a new fix on the gloves spacewalkers
wear, designed to prevent the tearing near the thumbs seen on recent missions.
Both spacewalkers will wear gloves with reinforced patches of a fabric called
TurtleSkin on the thumb and index finger. Tests show this material resisting
cuts four times better than the normal fabric.
All in all,
it should be a busy day for
the whole crew.
“We’ve got
a lot of work to do,” Garan said before the launch. “It’s a very, very
challenging set of spacewalks that we’re doing.”
Though it
may be tough, Garan said he is excited for his first taste of space outside the
protective walls of the station.
“I
anticipate that it will be very overwhelming,” he said. “The view, just the
fact that this whole massive station is out there in front of you. We’ve
trained it in the pool but it’s just not the same.”
Today’s
spacewalk will also mark the 43rd anniversary of the first U.S.
spacewalk, performed by NASA astronaut Ed White during the Gemini 4 mission on
June 3, 1965.
advertisement
