Mon, Aug 01, 2005
Shuttle Astronauts On Second EVA
ANN REAL TIME NEWS: 0600 EDT -- Discovery astronauts
Soichi Noguchi and Steve Robinson crawled across the outside of the
International Space Station Monday, tackling a problem that has
plagued the ISS for months. They were replacing a troublesome
gyroscope -- one of four that control the attitude of the station
itself.
The Control Moment Gyro weighs more than 650 pounds and is the
size of a washing machine. Noguchi, an exchange astronaut from
Japan, and Robinson, are lifting the old CMG out of its fitting and
loading it into the shuttle's payload bay. They'll then fit the
station with a brand-new CMG in an EVA expected to last almost
seven hours.
There is still talk about whether to send the spacewalking duo
out for another EVA to deal with a problem on the underside of the
shuttle itself. There, gap-filler is protruding from between rows
of thermal tiles in not one, but two places.
"We have a team of folks working aggressively to go and make
that gap filler safe if we decide it's an issue. We have a separate
team looking at the effects of leaving that gap filler protruding,"
mission flight director Paul Hill said Sunday.
If Hill and company decide the gap-filler problem should indeed
be addressed, Robinson and Noguchi will do so Wednesday, during
their third and final EVA.
Discovery will spend an extra day at the station, helping the
two-man crew there perform tasks that require extra hands, because
at this point, there's no telling when another shuttle mission will
get off the ground. NASA ordered the entire surviving fleet of
orbiters grounded once again, after a chunk of foam fell from the
external tank last Tuesday during the boost phase of Discovery's
launch. In an incident remarkably familiar to the one that caused
Columbia's destruction two years ago, that chunk of foam impacted
the orbiter's left wing. There was no immediate indication of
serious damage to Discovery.
"The Columbia accident made us realize we had been playing
Russian roulette with the shuttle crews," said deputy shuttle
program manager Wayne Hale, quoted by the BBC.
More News
Airbus Racer Demonstrator Makes Inaugural Flight Airbus Helicopters' ambitious Racer demonstrator has achieved its inaugural flight as part of the Clean Sky 2 initiative, a corners>[...]
A little Bit Quieter, Said Testers, But in the End it's Still a DA40 Diamond Aircraft recently completed a little pilot project with Lufthansa Aviation Training, putting a pair of >[...]
Line Up And Wait (LUAW) Used by ATC to inform a pilot to taxi onto the departure runway to line up and wait. It is not authorization for takeoff. It is used when takeoff clearance >[...]
Contributing To The Accident Was The Pilot’s Use Of Methamphetamine... Analysis: The pilot departed on a local flight to perform low-altitude maneuvers in a nearby desert val>[...]
From 2015 (YouTube Version): Overcoming Obstacles To Achieve Their Dreams… At EAA AirVenture 2015, FedEx arrived with one of their Airbus freight-hauling aircraft and placed>[...]
Airbus Racer Helicopter Demonstrator First Flight Part of Clean Sky 2 Initiative
See All