CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The International Space Station has a fresh look thanks to the successful attachment Thursday of the $390 million S-One (S1) truss to the orbiting complex.
Weighing some 15 tons and stretching 45 feet (13.7 meters) long, the S1 truss is packed full of electronics and plumbing and holds a set of three radiator panels that eventually will help keep the space station cool.
It was carried into space aboard shuttle Atlantis, which launched Monday from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and docked Tuesday at the frontier outpost.
Lifting it in place and making all of the appropriate connections between the S1 truss and the rest of the station was the main goal for Thursday. Although some of the work took a little bit longer than planned, at the end of the day NASA managers claimed success.
"We got everything done," said Milt Heflin, a NASA mission operations manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We (just) had to do it a little bit differently."
Troubles with the station's robot arm and a few sticky bolts added up to extend the workday and shuffle the timeline somewhat, turning a planned 6.5-hour spacewalk into a seven hour, one-minute affair, which began a half-hour later than scheduled in the first place.
"The hardest part of this job is just to get ready to do this job," Heflin said. "But if you prepare appropriately then everything will come out fine."The day began with Atlantis astronaut Sandy Magnus and Expedition Five science officer Peggy Whitson operating the station's robot arm to lift the S1 truss from the shuttle's cargo bay and place it next to the S0 truss, which sits atop the Destiny science module after its installation in April.
By mid-morning the S1 truss was securely bolted to the S0 truss, clearing the way for Atlantis spacewalkers Dave Wolf and Piers Sellers to float outside and begin a long day of connecting the power, data and fluid lines between the new truss and the rest of the station.
At 11:21 a.m. EDT (1521 GMT) the spacewalk officially began and for Sellers, a rookie who had spent hundreds of hours training for this event underwater, the first step outside the Quest airlock was the proverbial doozey.
"I don't know how to tell you this, but they've made the pool bigger," Sellers said. "I'm looking straight down. It's a beautiful view of the shuttle and the ground. This is unbelievable."
Stealing occasional glances at the Earth spinning below, the pair worked through their timeline while Atlantis pilot Pam Melroy directed the activity from inside the shuttle's flight deck, where the windows there gave the best view of what was going on outside.
"It looks like a work of art out there," Melroy said at one point.
"Does it look like the patch?" Sellers asked, referring to the crew patch that depicts what the station would look like when the new truss was added. "Did we get the patch right?"
"We got the patch right," Melroy replied.
Among the tasks completed during this 44th spacewalk at the station:
- Power, data and fluid lines were connected between S1 and S0, allowing electricity to flow through the new Boeing-built truss and keep it warm until the radiator system is activated during a future shuttle mission.
- An S-band radio antenna was deployed on the truss, giving the space station a back-up means to communicate with the Earth.
- Several bolts that securely held certain equipment in place during launch were removed, in particular freeing a small cart that resembles a railroad handcar and moves along a track that's built into the entire length of truss. The cart will be used to assist future spacewalkers with their assembly work.
- Installed the first parts of a new television camera system that also will be used to help with future assembly work.
With the addition of the S1 truss, the space station now appears a little out of balance with a giant girder harmlessly sticking out of one side, but it's a look that won't last long.
The P-One truss, a mirror image of the S1 truss, is set for launch Nov. 10 aboard shuttle Endeavour. The truss was supposed to be loaded into the payload change out room at KSC's pad 39A, but the operation was delayed because for most of the day the Space Coast was under a Tropical Storm Watch.
The remnants of Hurricane Kyle -- still a tropical depression and possibly growing stronger -- was just offshore to the east but is now moving more to the north, and at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) the watch area was moved north as well.
Still ahead for the combined Atlantis and station crews: a few hours off on Friday followed by a busy day of recharging the spacesuits for the next spacewalk planned for Saturday and moving hundreds of pounds of supplies from the shuttle into the orbiting laboratory.
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