Two astronauts completed a seven-hour spacewalk Tuesday to wire up the International Space Station's Harmony module in preparation for the delivery of a new European lab next month.
Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Daniel Tani began the walk at 5:10 a.m. ET to hook up power and heater cables and fluid lines between the station and the Italian-made pressurized utility hub.
Expedition 16 Commander Peggy Whitson (centre) and Flight Engineer Dan Tani work outside the International Space Station during the Nov. 20 spacewalk.
(NASA TV)
Harmony, which arrived last month aboard the Discovery shuttle, was moved on Nov. 14 to its permanent home at the forward end of the U.S. Destiny lab. Once completed, the module will be the docking port for two new labs.
Tani retrieved a bag of tools left outside during the Nov. 9 spacewalk, reconfigured a circuit, mated avionics lines and assisted with the connection of the cooling loop.
Whitson worked on the cooling loop, configured heater cables and hooked up the electrical harnesses linking the module's new Mating adapter, added Nov. 12, to station power.
The astronauts took turns slowly moving the fluid lines — for carrying the coolant ammonia — in a six-metre-long, 136-kilogram tray from its storage location on the space station to Harmony using a relay technique.
While venting some of the hookups, frozen ammonia crystals floated out and bounced off Whitson. Mission Control told her not to worry, as decontamination procedures include brushing off the toxic substance and letting the sun bake it off.
Early in the spacewalk, Tani reported some minor abrasion on the outermost layer of his right glove. He said it occurred while he was working with fluid line hookups. Spacewalking astronauts have ripped their gloves three times over the past year on sharp station edges. NASA is hunting for those jagged areas.
Tuesday's seven-hour and 16-minute spacewalk ended at 12:26 ET. The pair is scheduled to complete another spacewalk on Saturday to finish the Harmony hookup.
The new European laboratory, Columbus, is slated to arrive aboard NASA's shuttle Atlantis, which is scheduled to launch on Dec. 6. The second lab, Japan's Kibo, will arrive in two pieces in February and April.
The space station is expected to be completed in 2010.
With files from the Associated PressRelated
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