CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The Atlantis astronauts moved a shuttle docking port toward a temporary storage spot on the International Space Station Saturday, clearing the way for a $1.4 billion science lab to be mounted to the outpost.
Working with a Canadian-built robot arm, mission specialist Marsha Ivins snatched the conical docking tunnel from a berthing port on the U.S. Unity module about 10 a.m. EST (15:00 GMT) and began hauling it toward a girder-like outpost truss.
A series of 16 mechanical latches were unhooked first, and as a musical prelude to the move, shuttle skipper Ken Cockrell pumped up the volume of an old country standard: "Please Release Me," by the legendary Hank Williams.
"You and Marsha have a second career as deejays when you get back," astronaut Mario Runco said from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.
"That's if you let us come back," Cockrell replied. "We'll see if we can get this job done first."
Two spacewalking astronauts then set out to scale the 13-story station, aiming to latch the port to the truss so that the U.S. Destiny lab can be put in place at the end of Unity, where it will serve as a dual command post and science research center.
"Enjoy the walk - and good luck," Runco told mission specialists Robert Curbeam and Tom Jones as they exited the shuttle just before 11 a.m. EST (16:00 GMT)."Boy this is something!" Jones said as he floated out into open space.
The shuttle docking port will be on the move again Monday.
During the second of three spacewalks planned for the mission, the spacewalking duo will relocate it on the forward end of the lab - a job required to provide future station construction crews with a shuttle parking place at the orbital complex.
The interim move, meanwhile, came amid an already jam-packed day at the frontier outpost - one deemed crucial to NASA's $60 billion station construction project.
The 16-ton Destiny lab must be put in place and activated before further assembly can be carried out at the station, which eventually will weigh 480 tons and span an area nearly as large as two football fields set side by side.
"We really need to get this done," NASA lead flight director Robert Castle told SPACE.com during a news briefing Friday. "It's a very critical operation that has to get done (Saturday)."
The installation job calls for Ivins to hoist the hefty lab from its tight nest in the shuttle's cargo bay. The veteran robot arm operator will have only an inch (2.54 centimeters) clearance on either side of the lab during the slow-motion lift.
Next up will be the so-called "flip."
With the bus-sized lab fastened to the 50-foot (15-meter) robot arm, Ivins will attempt to flip the hulking facility 180 degrees so it can be properly positioned at the end of the $300 million Unity module, a pressurized passageway to other parts of the station.
The metal keel pin holding the lab into the bottom of the shuttle's cargo bay is designed to serve as a mounting point for truss segment to be ferried up to the station in 2002. The lab, consequently, has to be flipped so that the pin will be left pointing up for the subsequent attachment of the truss.
Once the lab is berthed to Unity, Curbeam and Jones will route nine electrical power cables and quartet of cooling lines between the research facility and the rest of the station.
At the same time, the outpost's resident crew - U.S. astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - will be preparing for a crucial flurry of work required to power up lab computers and activate its cooling system.
The work must be completed in a mere four hours to make certain that humidity and condensation don't begin to build up in the lab, potentially damaging sensitive electronics gear.
The shuttle crew, meanwhile, started their day by dodging a bullet.
With an unidentified piece of orbital debris barreling toward the joined shuttle-station complex, Atlantis commander Cockrell carried out a series of unplanned jet thruster firings to boost the craft out of harm's way.
Radar tracking showed that the debris would sweep within 825 feet (250 meters) of the shuttle and the station if evasive action was not taken - or well within a closely guarded safety zone surrounding the outpost.
The thruster firings raised the altitude of the outpost by about one mile (1.6 kilometers), putting the station and Atlantis a safe distance from the path of the debris.
The Atlantis crew already had planned to carry out seven so-called "reboost" maneuvers to raise the station's orbit. So one of those now has been carried out, albeit earlier than planned.
Launched last Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center, the shuttle astronauts are in the midst of a weeklong stay at the station.
The last of the three spacewalks planned for the mission - now set to take place next Wednesday - will involve stowing a spare communications antenna outside the outpost.
Atlantis is scheduled to depart the station Friday, Feb. 16, after a final farewell and hatch-closing ceremony now scheduled for 7:18 a.m. EST (12:18 GMT) that day.
The shuttle and its crew are due to land at Kennedy Space Center at 12:52 p.m. EST (17:52 GMT) Sunday, Feb. 18.
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