Astronaut Randy Bresnik may be expecting his wife Rebecca to
give birth, but that hasn't shaken his focus for a planned spacewalk outside
the International Space Station today to install new video antennas and other
equipment.
Bresnik and crewmate Mike Foreman plan to venture outside
the station at 9:38 a.m. EST (1438 GMT) this morning and spend 6 hours upgrading the space
station's systems. A massive cargo carrier laden with tons of spare parts will
also be moved to the station from the linked shuttle Atlantis later today.
"Randy is 100 percent focused on this spacewalk," NASA's
lead space station flight director Brian Smith told reporters late Friday.
Bresnik's daughter was expected
to be born as early as Friday, but could come today or later, Smith said.
Mission managers will work with Bresnik's flight surgeon to come up with a plan
to notify the astronaut if his daughter is born during the spacewalk. Bresnik
is only the second American to be in space while his wife
is giving birth.
The uncertainty of the baby girl's arrival has not affected
preparations for today's spacewalk, but more late-night false alarms on the
station Friday – which erroneously indicated a potentially dangerous
depressurization event for the second night in a row – have forced Mission
Control to make some changes.
"There's going to be a 30-minute time hit and we are making
adjustment for that," said space station flight director Jerry Jason in an
early morning update. The spacewalk was initially slated to begin at about 8:18
a.m. EST (1318 GMT).
Mission Control also plans to let the astronauts sleep an
extra half hour and will likely cut unnecessary get-ahead chores from today's
spacewalk to compensate for lost time, Jason said.
The alarms
sounded at about 10 p.m. EST (0300 Sat. GMT) while all 12 astronauts on the
linked station and shuttle Atlantis were sleeping. Bresnik and Foreman were
camping out in the station's Quest airlock, a process that allows them to sleep
at a lower pressure than the station to purge their bodies of nitrogen in order
to prevent developing the bends while working outside in their low-pressure
NASA spacesuits.
Because of the alarms, the station automatically interrupted
that pre-spacewalk campout and equalized the pressure between the airlock and
space station. Ventilation fans shut off too, kicking up dust that set off a
smoke alarm in the airlock, but all the astronauts were safe at all times.
The time required to reset the station's systems meant
Bresnik and Foreman had to stop their campout. They will now have to spend time
early Saturday exercising while wearing oxygen facemasks to purge their bodies
of nitrogen ahead of the spacewalk. The exercise technique is a tried-and-true
method for spacewalk preparation.
NASA engineers believe the false alarms, which also sounded
late Thursday, are related to a new Russian module called Poisk, which arrived
at the station earlier this month and serves as a research area, docking port
and airlock.
Saturday's spacewalk will be the fifth orbital excursion for
Foreman and the first for Bresnik.
The crew woke up today at 3:58 a.m. EST (0858 GMT), half an
hour later than originally planned, to the song, "Voyage to Atlantis" by The
Isley Brothers, which was played specially for mission specialist Bobby
Satcher.
Atlantis astronauts are in the midst of an 11-day
mission to deliver tons of huge spare parts to the space station – pieces so
big, only NASA's shuttles can carry them. NASA wants to ship as many extra
parts and gear to the station as possible before the planned 2010 retirement of
its three remaining space shuttles.
Earlier this week, shuttle astronauts attached another massive
shelf-like carrier - laden with spare pumps, tanks, a gyroscope and other gear
– to the station. The shuttle is due to undock from the station next week, just
before Thanksgiving, and land on Friday.
SPACE.com is providing complete coverage of Atlantis'
STS-129 mission to the International Space Station with Staff Writer Clara
Moskowitz and Managing Editor Tariq Malik based in New York. Click here for shuttle mission
updates and a link to NASA TV.
advertisement
