CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A cadre of orbital construction workers breezed through a daunting and potentially dangerous assembly job at the International Space Station Wednesday, mounting a trio of high-pressure gas tanks on the outpost's new $164 million airlock.
With shuttle Atlantis and the station flying in tandem high above Earth, three crane operators and two spacewalkers joined forces to latch two oxygen tanks and a nitrogen tank to the outer shell of the outpost's newly installed doorway to orbit.
| Tool Time |
| The joined crews of shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station will carry out a two-hour repair job Wednesday night, swapping out a leaky ventilation valve in the outpost's U.S. Unity module. |
Consequently, only a single nitrogen tank now remains to be anchored to the airlock when the joined shuttle-station crews inaugurate the 6.5-ton pressure chamber during a spacewalk now scheduled to begin late Friday night.
"You guys have done a great job today," shuttle pilot Charles Hobaugh told the construction workers at the close of a six-hour, 29-minute sortie."It's nice to get ahead," spacewalker James Reilly replied.
"Everybody down here is ecstatic," Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean added from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.
The high-flying assembly work got off to a late start late Tuesday after a brief computer crash temporarily rendered the station's $600 million robot arm inoperable.
After a hurried bid to revive the computer, Reilly and fellow spacewalker Michael Gernhardt set out to help attach an oxygen tank and a nitrogen tank to the so-called Quest airlock.
And as it turned out, the astronauts had time to mount a second oxygen tank that originally was to be installed on the third and final spacewalk planned for the shuttle's stay at the station.
The gas tanks -- dubbed doghouses due to the shape of their protective metal cases -- will be used to replenish air supplies within the 6.5-ton airlock, which was mounted to the starboard side of the station's Unity module during a spacewalk Sunday.
Station flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss took turns using the station's 57.7-foot (17-meter) robot arm to lift the tanks off a shuttle cargo bay pallet and then hoist them up to a point scant inches from the airlock.
Atlantis mission specialist Janet Kavandi, at the same time, used the shuttle's 50-foot (15-meter) robot arm to haul Gernhardt up to the airlock while Reilly scaled the side of the station, climbing four stories to the same work site.
Television images beamed back from the linked shuttle-station complex showed Gernhardt hanging from the end of the shuttle robot arm.
"Mike, you look like you're having way too much fun," shuttle skipper Steve Lindsey said.
"It is a nice ride," Gernhardt replied, thanking Kavandi -- who celebrated her birthday in space Tuesday -- for the lift.
Said Reilly: "Birthday girl does good."
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