The two in fact were so focused on the job that ground controllers at one point implored them to gaze down as shuttle Discovery and the station soared above the Caribbean Sea, where a tropical storm was threatening to spin up into a full-fledged hurricane."If you look down into the gulf there, you'll see a new tropical storm -- Chantal -- that we're keeping our eyes on real close," Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean said from NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston. "You guys are doing so good on time, you should take a few looks."
"Hey Steve, I see that storm you're talking about, and it's absolutely awesome. Wow!" Barry said as he peered down on the swirling tempest. "There's tremendous rotation in the center. You can see the thunderstorms piling up."
Said MacLean: "I'm glad that you can take advantage of your view."
With Chantal racing toward the Lesser Antilles, the spacewalkers meticulously mounted a pallet of spare coolant tanks on the outpost's $600 million U.S. electric power tower, which serves as the base for the station's massive American solar arrays.
Live television images beamed back from the shuttle showed the astronauts toiling four stories above the nose of Discovery with the glimmering gold solar wings looming above them.
The assembly work called for the spacewalkers first to unfasten six bolts that held the 1,200-pound (540-kilogram) pallet atop a shuttle cargo bay cradle -- a job the astronauts carried out with pistol grip power tools.
Wielding the shuttle's 50-foot (15-meter) robot arm, Discovery commander Scott Horowitz then hoisted the pallet from its cradle and lifted it toward the truss-like power tower. Hanging on to handrails on the coolant tanks, Barry and Forrester went along for the ride.
"Fasten your seatbelts," Horowitz joked.
With the shuttle arm stretched to its limits, Horowitz handed the hefty pallet off to the spacewalkers, who carefully guided it onto its station attachment point.
The astronauts then hooked heater cables up to the tanks, which hold a reserve supply of ammonia, the fluid used in station radiators to cool outpost electronics.
"Very nice work," shuttle pilot Rick Sturckow told Barry and Forrester from inside the crew cabin of Discovery. "It looked really smooth."
Two trays filled with advanced materials and spacecraft components also were attached to the exterior of the station's $164 million airlock during the sortie.
Shaped like suit-cases, the science packages hold paints, coatings, solar cells, sensors, switches, lenses and mirrors that one day might be used to build next-generation spaceships, solar sails, communications antennas and orbital telescopes, among other things.
Opened up by the spacewalkers, the cases will be exposed to the harsh space environment for more than a year before being return to Earth for scientific evaluation.
That final job also called for Forrester and Barry to ride up to a work site at the end of the shuttle's Canadian-built crane, and TV images showed the astronauts dangling at the end of the arm with the blue orb Earth and black space serving as a backdrop.
Without prompting, the spacewalkers took a moment to gaze down on the planet as the linked shuttle-station complex crossed over the Pacific Ocean, heading toward the west coast of the continental U.S.
"It's a beautiful view looking out over the tail," Forrester said.
"Pretty spectacular," Barry replied.
The six-hour, 16-minute excursion unfolded after the station's newly arrived crew marked the 1000th day in space for the first building block of the outpost -- the Russian space tug Zarya, which was launched Nov. 20, 1998.
Also known by the Russian acronym FGB, the station cornerstone connects the U.S. and Russian sections of the outpost, which now features four linked wings that stretch 171 feet (52 meters) from end to end.
"The FBG is a small kernel that began the station," station skipper Frank Culbertson said in live commemorative message beamed down to flight engineers in both Houston and Moscow.
"It joins the Russian segment and the U.S. segment very securely and soundly and is a very terrific foundation for the station.
Flanked by Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin, Culbertson and his crewmates were floating in a narrow hatchway within Zarya at the time.
"We're very proud to be in it at this moment and wishing everybody happiness and congratulations on the first 1,000 days," Culbertson said. "And we're looking forward to the next 1,000 days."
Culbertson and his cosmonaut colleagues took command of the station earlier this week, replacing Russian skipper Yuri Usachev and U.S. flight engineers Susan Helms and Jim Voss, who now are considered part of Discovery's crew.
The so-called Expedition Three and Expedition Two crews watched over the spacewalking work from inside the station.
Barry and Forrester will carry out a second sortie Saturday to rig up power cables outside the station's U.S. Destiny science laboratory, and a day later, the astronauts will help stow an Italian moving van back in the shuttle's cargo bay.
Now attached to the Unity module, the cylindrical shipping container is being loaded up with luggage, surplus station gear and garbage for a return trip to Earth.
Discovery and its four space taxi drivers are slated to depart the station next Monday with Usachev, Helms and Voss, who will return to Earth after 167 days in orbit.
Landing remains scheduled for at 12:48 p.m. EDT (1648 GMT) next Wednesday here at Kennedy Space Center. Culbertson and his crew will remain at the station until Dec. 9.
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