CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A second massive solar wing was coaxed and finally jerked into place at the International Space Station late Monday, clearing the way for a spacewalk aimed at delivering abundant electricity to the power-starved outpost.

In a deliberate stop-and-go operation that took two hours, Endeavour's astronauts inched the delicate array out in fits and starts, trying to avoid the type of whip-cracking wave that left an identical wing slack after a speedier deployment Sunday.

The second solar wing is seen fully deployed at the International Space Station complex in this image from NASA TV on Monday night.

Working at a cautious pace, the astronauts reeled the motor-driven wing to within a yard of its fully extended position, stopping every 30 seconds to make sure the array was unfolding properly. Then two stuck blanket panels brought the painstaking process to a nerve-wracking halt.

But ultimately, a quick jolt from the motor drives - coupled with a firm and concurrent tug from tensioning wires - enabled the crew to ram the array into place, giving the station a new pair of solar wings capable of generating enough electricity to power 30 homes.

"Great work gentlemen. You've got a lot of happy folks down here. We think you've earned your solar array wings, and we'll be issuing your new uniform insignia upon your return," astronaut Mario Runco told the crew from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston.

"Thank you very much. You're very kind. There was a fair amount of tension here in the cockpit," Endeavour astronaut Joe Tanner replied, pun intended.

"Needless to say, the room down here was filled with electricity," Runco added.

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Look for the twin wings -- which stretch 240 feet (73 meters) from tip to tip -- to be wired up during a spacewalk starting at 12:56 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (17:56 GMT) Tuesday.

Shuttle astronauts Carlos Noriega and Tanner will perform the six-hour excursion, which will cap three-day effort to mount a new $600 million electric power tower at the station and then deploy and activate the new solar arrays.

Mission Endeavour

Look here for the latest news from NASA's STS-97.

NASA mission managers delayed the deployment of the second wing after an identical array bunched up and bounced back and forth during a 14-minute deployment sequence late Sunday.

The result: Cables meant to tighten one of the wing's blankets jumped off their pulleys, leaving the panel just a bit slack.

"It was like you were loading up a spring and then it would release," Tanner said in a space-to-ground interview Monday. "It was pretty dynamic there for a while."

Engineers think some of the blanket panels stuck together inside their storage box. The arrays remained folded up within the box for nine months prior to Endeavour's Nov. 30 launch.

Despite the flawed deploy, the first solar wing is generating electricity as expected.

NASA, however, would prefer to see it completely taut to make certain the fragile wing is secure enough to withstand forces put upon it when U.S. shuttles -- as well as Russian crew transport vehicles and cargo carriers -- dock with the station.

Mission managers still are trying to decide whether the astronauts should try to tighten the slack blanket. Tanner and Noriega will scale the station during the spacewalk Tuesday to examine the loose cables.

The pair might be asked to use a luggage-like strap to pull the cables taut during a spacewalk scheduled to start at 11:51 a.m. EST (16:51 GMT) Thursday.

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The daunting job likely would require Noriega, his arms outstretched like an Olympic gymnast, to hold Tanner up by the feet so the latter could reach a tension bar connected to the limp cables.

"We essentially (would) become a stack of two people to get me high enough to get a tether around the tension bar and pull it down," Tanner said. "It should be exciting of we try it."

Endeavour's STS-97 crew talk with news media on Monday. From left: Carlos Noriega, Mike Bloomfield, Joe Tanner, Marc Garneau and Brent Jett. Image from NASA TV.

The solar arrays wiring work, however, will come first.

The two orbital electricians will set out Tuesday to connect electrical cables that will enable electricity from the new arrays to be routed into the station, quintupling the amount of power available to run critical outpost systems.

Existing electrical supplies from Russian arrays are so sparse that one of the station's three pressurized work areas remains off limits to the station's first full-time crew, which took up residence at the complex in early November.

The so-called Unity node -- which is the most expansive of the station's segments -- cannot be opened up permanently until there is enough power available to heat it.

The extra electrical power also is a must before NASA and its international partners can expand the station during a series of almost 40 more U.S. shuttle and Russian rocket missions.

For the second consecutive night, the station crew -- which includes U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev -- missed the action outside the station. The three men were in the midst of an eight-hour sleep period during the deployment of the second solar wing.

That's not to say, however, that the trio isn't anxious to see the station's new solar power system up and running.

"We're looking forward to getting more power on the station, having enough to heat up the node so we can get in there routinely, and having access to the whole complex of modules onboard," Shepherd told flight controllers before his crew retired for the night.

Shepherd and company will remain onboard the station until a relief crew arrives at the outpost next February. The Endeavour astronauts, meanwhile, will depart the station Saturday, heading for a 6:19 p.m. EST (23:19 GMT) Dec. 11 landing at Kennedy Space Center.