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Atlantis Astronauts End Spacewalk Marred By Slippery Fingers
Houston (AFP) Sept 13, 2006 Two Atlantis shuttle astronauts turned into space mechanics Wednesday armed with tools to set up a pair of power-producing solar panels on the half-finished International Space Station. Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean and US counterpart Dan Burbank struggled with troublesome bolts in the second of three planned spacewalks, even though NASA deemed the excursion a success overall. The 11-day Atlantis mission marks the resumption of ISS construction, which had been halted following the 2003 Columbia shuttle tragedy that left seven astronauts dead. Burbank and MacLean worked on a 360-degree rotation system allowing the solar arrays to rotate to track the sun. The panels will eventually double the orbiting laboratory's power capabilities. The spacewalkers broke a tool and lost a bolt in the process, the second day in a row that spacewalkers lose a bolt outside the ISS. "There is a missing bolt on the blanket, I did not see it go," MacLean told the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, a little more than an hour after the spacewalk began. Officials said the wandering bolt would pose no threat to the ISS or shuttle, which docked with the station on Monday. While one bolt was lost, another refused to budge. MacLean broke a socket trying to loosen the bolt on a launch restraint. It took the force of both MacLean and Burbank to finally remove the stubborn bolt. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was pleased with the spacewalk. "What a great day," John McCullough, the lead ISS flight director, told reporters at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. But, he acknowledged, "Today we had numerous battles with the hardware." A 16-tonne truss segment with the solar arrays was attached to the station Tuesday using a robotic arm. Mission specialists Joe Tanner and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper then performed the first spacewalk to hook up power cables. A bolt also floated away during the first spacewalk, but it was also deemed no threat to the spacecraft. Once unfurled Thursday, the solar arrays will measure 240 feet (73 meters) long and will ultimately provide a quarter of the ISS's power once the outpost is completed. Tanner and Stefanyshyn-Piper, the only woman in the six-member crew, will perform the last spacewalk Friday. The panels were brought to the station by Atlantis on a mission that was launched Saturday. The last ISS assembly work was in November 2002 as the Columbia accident forced NASA to work on improving flight safety. Two Discovery flights in 2005 and in July focused on testing new techniques to protect the shuttle from another disaster. On its way to the ISS, Atlantis's heat shield passed a thorough examination in what has become a routine safety check since the Columbia accident and was declared free of damage. Columbia was doomed by foam insulation that peeled off its external fuel tank during liftoff and pierced its heat shield, causing it to disintegrate as it returned to Earth in February 2003. The shuttle is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 20. NASA plans 15 more shuttle trips to complete the ISS by 2010, when the three-shuttle fleet is to be retired. Completing the ISS, whose first section was launched in 1998, is central to US ambitions to fly humans back to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
Source: Agence France-Presse Related Links Space Shuttle News at Space-Travel.Com
ESA Experiments With Spaceflight Participant Ansari To ISS
Baikonur, Kazakhstan (SPX) Sep 13, 2006Scheduled to lift off on 18 September 2006 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, along with Expedition 14 crew members, NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will be the test subject for four ESA experiments during her stay on board the International Space Station. |
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