Wed, Jun 04, 2008
Occurred On 43rd Anniversary Of First US Excursion
Tuesday was the 43rd anniversary of the first spacewalk by an
American, performed by Ed White during the Gemini IV mission. The
crews of the space shuttle Discovery and the International Space
Station celebrated with a six-hour, 48-minute spacewalk to prepare
Japan's new Kibo research lab for installation on the station.
Veteran spacewalker Michael Fossum and his rookie partner,
Ronald Garan, got started about an hour late, at 1230 EDT, due to
problems with communications equipment. Among their tasks was
retrieval of a 50-foot boom to be used in a detailed look for
damage on Discovery's exterior before attempting reentry.
Normally, that inspection boom is carried on each shuttle
mission, but the Kibo lab section being delivered on this mission
is so big, there was no room. Anticipating the issue, the last
shuttle crew left theirs stowed along the outside of the space
station. Discovery will have plenty of room on the way home to
bring it back.
After Fossum and Garan prepared the station's Harmony module for
docking with Kibo's huge pressurized module, astronauts Akihiko
Hoshide and Karen Nyberg, working from inside the station, used the
station's robot arm to draw the module into position, and docking
was completed just after 1900 eastern.
Garan also replaced a trundle bearing on the station's starboard
solar array. Debris was discovered in the array's rotary joint last
year, and the temporary fix was to stop turning the array to track
the sun. The resulting reduction in efficiency will leave the
station short on its power budget when the Kibo module is ready for
operation, so permanent repairs will need to be made.
Tuesday's spacewalk was the 195th for US astronauts, continuing
the tradition started by Ed White on June 3, 1965.
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