CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Messages of thanks and talk of turkey added to the holiday spirit in Earth orbit on Thursday while a pair of spacewalking astronauts worked outside the International Space Station.Endeavour crew members Michael Lopez-Alegria and John Herrington spent six hours and 10 minutes continuing to assemble the laboratory complex, including work on the newly installed P1 truss segment.
Inside, Endeavour pilot Paul Lockhart -- whose nickname is Paco -- served as the spacewalk choreographer, helping the two guys outside keep track of what needed to be done and when.
"You're not yawning, are you Paco?" Lopez-Alegria asked at one point.
"No, but chewing" Lochart replied, without saying exactly what it was he was munching on.
"Speaking of chewing," Lopez-Alegria said, "we apologize to the flight control team to make 'em be working on Thanksgiving."
"We're having a happy one down here, it's our pleasure," said astronaut Barbara Morgan from the space station flight control room in Houston.
"You're not chewing, are you Barb?" Lopez-Alegria asked.
"I'll never tell," Morgan said.
The friendly banter continued as the spacewalkers worked through their timeline, completing all of their planned tasks -- and then some. The jobs included:
- Connecting a set of ammonia fluid coolant lines between the newly installed P1 truss segment and its S0 truss neighbor.
Removing a pair of V-shaped pins that securely locked the P1 truss to the keel of shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay during the climb to orbit.Installing another set of antenna hardware so that television views from the helmetcams of future spacewalkers can be beamed back to the ground when a space shuttle is not docked to the outpost.Repositioning a Crew Equipment Translation Aid cart from the end of the P1 truss to the other end of the backbone on the S1 truss. This will give the station's robot arm enough room to move on its mobile transporter to the end of the P1 truss for future assembly work.Getting a couple of jobs planned for future spacewalks done on Thursday, including releasing a set of launch locks on a trio of radiator panels and connecting a cable on an antenna on the Unity node.In the holiday mood on the ground, as they have done in the past, Mission Control displayed a turkey on its world tracking map instead of a shuttle. This year marked the 11th time a U.S. manned spaceflight was under way on Thanksgiving -- although it was the first time a spacewalk was done on the holiday.
There was a time in 1996 when a stuck airlock hatch on Columbia ruined plans for a turkey day spacewalk for astronauts Tom Jones and Tammy Jernigan. Both eventually got to do spacewalks on later shuttle missions.
During this year's spacewalk, Endeavour commander Jim Wetherbee sent down an appropriately reflective holiday message of thanks.
"From the crews of Endeavour and Alpha we wish everyone below a Happy Thanksgiving. From our vantage point high above the Earth we can see we are very fortunate to be living at a time when society has advanced our technologies farther in one generation than in all of human history.""We developed powered flight one century ago. For me, it began when I participated merely by sitting alone and listening to the greatest flight of all, Apollo 8, where for the first time in human history three men got up one morning and left. I was captivated listening to my little nine-volt transistor radio as they passed around the back side of the Moon, totally cut off from the other five billion of us on the planet."
"Now as we float here looking at what is being built, we consider ourselves extremely fortunate to be part of this generation that is expanding technology. Lastly we are grateful for our families and friends, for without them this technology would be meaningless."
"From the crews of Endeavour and Alpha, we wish all of you closer to the center of our home planet a happy Thanksgiving."
On Friday the crews will continue moving equipment and supplies between Endeavour and the space station.
Also planned is a formal change of command ceremony in which outgoing Expedition Five commander Valery Korzun will hand over the outpost to incoming Expedition Six commander Ken Bowersox.
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