US Shuttle Astronauts Take Maintenance and Testing Spacewalk
Washington
08 July 2006
Two U.S. shuttle astronauts are on a maintenance and testing spacewalk while docked at the International Space Station. They are testing the shuttle's crane to determine if it can be used to make repairs to the orbiter. They are also fixing the station's railroad flat car.
Astronauts Mike Fossum and Piers Sellers donned their bulky spacesuits, and floated out of the airlock on the U.S. segment of the station for the first of three spacewalks during Discovery's two-week visit to the outpost.
It is the first such outing for Fossum, who is teamed with a veteran of four spacewalks.
They are determining if the shuttle's robot arm can take on a new task.
The space agency NASA doubled the length of the 15 meter crane with an extension for a camera to inspect places on the shuttle's underside that are hard to reach during orbit. The procedure helps engineers look at places on the shuttle's fragile ceramic tile skin that may need repair as the result of launch damage.
The two astronauts are testing whether the spindly boom extension is safe enough to hold people. NASA would like to use it as a work platform in case repairs are necessary to the shuttle's bottom while in orbit.
The agency developed the orbital inspection and repair procedures as the result of the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, which was punctured by debris falling off the external fuel tank during launch.
The other task for the spacewalking pair is to restore power to the space station's rail car. A cable was accidentally cut last year. The car runs along tracks to help position the outpost's mechanical arm during construction.
Work was not the only thing on the mind of Fossum and Sellers as they prepared to exit the station. Sellers asked U.S. mission controllers in Houston what countries are facing each other in Sunday's World Cup football championship.
The shuttle is on its first mission in almost one year. It is a flight to replace space station supplies, and deliver German astronaut Thomas Reiter as a third crewmember. But it is also a mission to test shuttle repair techniques and the changes NASA has made to the orbiter's external tank, to ensure it never again sheds pieces of hard insulating foam large enough to endanger a shuttle, as it did with Columbia.
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