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.

FMI: www.nasa.gov