Two Astronauts Finished The Job In Under Two Hours
Mission Specialists Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang took
on the roles of electricians and movers during STS-116's second
spacewalk at the International Space Station.
The pair spent 5 hours outside the station with the EVA ending
at 19:41 EST. They spent the first two hours rearranging a pair of
power leads from a temporary solar panel to a permanent array
installed in September. They spent the rest of the time relocating
two equipment carts.
To prepare the station for the spacewalkers' electrical work,
ground-based flight controllers sent a barrage of commands to power
down roughly half of the station's systems.
The spacewalk kicked off at 14:41 EST. Curbeam and Fuglesang
rewired two of the station's four power channels to the new array.
At 16:45 EST, after the pair double checked everything, flight
controllers began powering up the electrical systems in their new
configuration.
Astronauts will rewire the remaining two channels during the
mission's third spacewalk, slated for Saturday.
All the electrical work isn't just "rewiring" in the tradition
of Tool Time's Tim Allen. The new arrays astronauts are
installing will make possible more additions to the station and
support a larger crew when they become necessary.
The new array installed in September and wired up yesterday is
the first of four. The rest will be installed next year.
After ensuring the wiring job was complete, Curbeam and
Fuglesang spent the remaining EVA time relocating two crew
equipment translation aid carts. With the carts out of the way, the
station's mobile transporter rail car can move down the station's
rail system to the S1 truss when the ISS crew prepares for the
STS-117 mission next spring.
Pilot Bill Oefelein coordinated the spacewalk activities.
Expedition 14 Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and STS-116 Mission
Specialist Joan Higginbotham operated the station's robotic arm
(photo above).
The rest of the ISS and Discovery crewmembers had more mundane
house cleaning and rearranging chores to keep them busy -- namely
cargo transfers between Discovery and the station.
In other news, today the crew attempted once again to use a
remote control to retract the balky solar panel that gave
the crew trouble on Wednesday. By "jiggling" (technical NASA term)
the panel about 10 degrees from side to side, engineers hoped to
relieve tension in the wire system attached to the panels. The
entire solar panel is supposed to fold like a road map and retract
into a storage box.
So how are the astronauts "jiggling" the panels? One way is
the equivalent of jumping up and down real hard.
Jumping in the ISS is impossible because of the lack of gravity,
but exercise equipment made from bungees and a solid bar holds the
user to the station allowing a jumping motion. Scientists noticed
movement in the array on a previous mission as one of the
astronauts exercised using the equipment. Engineers may ask one of
the astronauts to try to reproduce the motion today.
If today's attempts are unsuccessful, NASA may make a fourth
unscheduled EVA to coax the panel back into its box by hand.