This story was updated at 8:34 p.m. EDT.
HOUSTON — Two spacewalking
astronauts floated outside the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday to outfit
its new Japanese laboratory and spot check a solar array joint.
Astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan
added two video cameras to the outboard end of the station's $1
billion Kibo laboratory and freed the tour bus-sized module's robotic arm
for shakedown tests during the more than seven-hour spacewalk.
Fossum also took a peek at part of a
10-foot (3-meter) wide gear that rotates the space station's port-side solar
arrays like a paddlewheel to track the sun. He reported what appeared to be a
build-up of a grease-like material on some surfaces, but found no signs of the type
of damage that has hobbled a similar joint on the station's starboard side.
"I do not see any
sign of metal shavings or any of the other stuff we have on the other side,"
Fossum told Mission Control here at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "This is a lot
cleaner."
Space station
flight director Annette Hasbrook said Fossum's observations are similar to
earlier reports on the healthy joint during inspections last year.
"It looked very
similar to what we've seen," she said.
Astronauts
discovered metallic grit contamination and damage in the starboard solar array
joint last fall, preventing the massive gear from continuously tracking the sun
to maximize power production. Fossum tested
cleaning methods on the damaged joint during a Tuesday spacewalk and NASA
engineers are studying the best methods for a possible repair.
Today's check of
the port-side gear was an extra chore aimed at checking whether that joint was
still in good health.
Kibo's eyes,
arm and attic
Fossum and Garan stepped outside the
station at 11:04 a.m. EDT (1504 GMT) and dedicated the bulk of today's 7-hour,
11-minute spacewalk to outfitting Japan's newly opened Kibo laboratory, the largest
room ever launched to the space station.
"It's a long ways out here to the
end cone," said Fossum as he and Garan hauled themselves across the entire
length of the 37-foot (11-meter) Kibo lab. "Whooee! What a view."
With the cameras installed, the
spacewalkers moved on to remove bulky insulation covers and restraints from
Kibo's six-jointed robotic arm so astronauts can put it through its paces in
weekend tests.
"It's like wrestling a cloud,"
said Fossum, a veteran camper and scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America, as
they forced the covers into storage bags. "I feel like I'm on a camping trip
trying to pack up a wet tent on a Sunday morning."
The spacewalkers also cleared the
Kibo lab's rooftop for the arrival of its attic-like
storage room, which a previous shuttle crew attached at a temporary perch
last March. Shuttle astronauts are slated to use the station's robotic arm to
move the storage room to Kibo's roof on Friday.
While Fossum and Garan toiled
outside the space station, their crewmates were hard at work inside the new
Kibo lab.
Station and shuttle astronauts
methodically moved eight phone booth-sided equipment racks from the Kibo lab's
storage module into the new, roomy laboratory itself to prepare for tomorrow's
move.
Thursday's spacewalk marked the
111th dedicated to space station construction. Fossum ended the excursion with
a total of 35 hours and 28 minutes of spacewalking time over five career
spacewalks, while Garan ended with 13 hours and 59 minutes in two spacewalks.
Fossum and Garan plan to make one
more spacewalk for their 14-day mission on Sunday to replace an empty nitrogen
tank on the station's metallic backbone-like main truss. They loosened bolts
and retrieved a broken camera today to prepare for that final excursion.
NASA is broadcasting Discovery's STS-124 mission live on NASA TV on Saturday. Click here for SPACE.com's
shuttle mission updates and NASA TV feed.
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