This
story was update at 8:17 p.m. EDT.
Two
spacewalking astronauts floated outside the International Space Station
Thursday to help attach the last pair of solar wings for the orbital lab's
power grid.
Clad in
their NASA-issue spacesuits, astronauts Steven Swanson and Richard Arnold II
spent just over six hours installing the new solar arrays and their 16-ton
support girder on the space station's starboard side.
"It's a lot
bigger than when you left it, you guys were outstanding," station
commander Michael Fincke told the spacewalkers as they began wrapped up
their work. "Thanks for the hard work."
Delivered
by the shuttle Discovery, the $298 million solar wings are due to be unfurled
on Friday. Until then, they'll stay folded up like oversized maps inside their
storage boxes.
The station
currently has six solar wings, two for each of its three deployed arrays. When
the new arrays are deployed, the station will have eight wings, with four on
each side giving it a symmetrical look.
Astronauts
inside the space station used the orbiting lab's robotic arm to gently ease the
solar wing segment in place, making tiny adjustments based on verbal cues from
Swanson and Arnold, who had a ringside seat to the delicate attachment.
The
spacewalkers secured the 45-foot (14-meter) solar array girder in place with
four bolts and hooked up a power and data cables, at times wrestling with
stubborn clasps.
"It wasn't
quite as smooth as we had hoped, but those guys did a great job," said
Discovery astronaut Joseph Acaba, who choreographed the spacewalk from the
shuttle and - like Arnold - is a former schoolteacher.
Thursday
spacewalk began at 1:16 p.m. EDT (1716 GMT) as the docked shuttle and space
station flew 220 miles (354 km) above the Pacific Ocean near New Guinea. While
Swanson and Arnold worked outside, their crewmates inside the station
successfully repaired Discovery's broken exercise bike.
"It was a
great team effort out there today," Swanson said. "Wonderful."
Space
station power up
Each of the
space
station's new solar wings will extend about 115 feet (35 meters) when
deployed and, together, will boost the outpost's power grid by 25 percent. When
complete, the four U.S. solar arrays will generate enough electricity to power
42 average sized homes, NASA has said.
That power
is vital for the space station, where astronauts hope to increase the amount of
science performed inside its U.S., Russian, European and Japanese modules. The
extra power will also be needed once the space station doubles its crew size up
to six people in late May.
The new
starboard solar wings are moored to a 31,000-pound (14,061-kg) girder known as
the Starboard-6 (S6) truss. It is the last
major American-built piece of the $100 billion International Space Station
and the final part of the outpost's 11-segment main truss.
With the S6
girder's installation, the space station now weighs nearly 1 million pounds
(453,592 kg), with its backbone-like main truss extending more than 300 feet
(91 meters), long than a football field. The space station can be easily
spotted from Earth by the naked eye on a clear night.
Thursday's
spacewalk marked the 121st excursion dedicated to space station construction
and the first of three planned for Discovery's astronauts.
It was the
third career spacewalk for Swanson, who finished with 19 hours and 52 minutes,
and the first for Arnold, who is making his first spaceflight.
Discovery's
mission initially included four spacewalks and one extra day. NASA shortened
the flight after a series of launch delays so the shuttle crew could complete
the construction work and leave the station before the arrival of a previously
scheduled Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
That Soyuz
is due to launch a new crew and American
billionaire Charles Simonyi, who is paying about $35 million for his second
space tourist flight, to the station next week.
SPACE.com
is providing continuous coverage of STS-119 with reporter Clara Moskowitz and
senior editor Tariq Malik in New York. Click here for mission
updates and SPACE.com's live NASA TV video feed.
advertisement
