Spacewalking astronauts tackle station maintenance
22 Mar 2009 00:39:31 GMT Source: Reuters
*Spacewalk is second of three for shuttle crew *Work will prepare station for Japan's cargo ship (Adds spacewalk completed) By Irene Klotz HOUSTON, March 21 (Reuters) - Space shuttle Discovery's lead spacewalker and his rookie partner floated outside the International Space Station on Saturday to prepare the complex for the debut flight of an unmanned Japanese cargo ship and future construction missions. After completing a 6 1-2 hour spacewalk, astronauts Steven Swanson and Joseph Acaba returned to the station's airlock at 7:21 p.m. EDT (2321 GMT) to officially end the second of three spacewalks planned for Discovery's crew. The outing was the fourth for Swanson, who was a member of a 2007 station construction crew, and the first for Acaba, a former teacher making his debut spaceflight aboard Discovery. The shuttle and seven astronauts blasted off on March 15 for a 13-day mission. Their main goal was to install the fourth and final pair of solar panel wings onto the station, bringing it to full power after more than 10 years of construction. The glittering wings were installed by Swanson and astronaut Richard Arnold during the first spacewalk of the mission on Thursday and successfully unfurled on Friday. During Saturday's spacewalk, Swanson and Acaba loosened connections on batteries that will be replaced during the next shuttle mission to the station, currently targeted for June. They also installed a GPS navigation antenna that will be used by Japan's unmanned cargo ship, the HTV, during its debut flight later this year and used an infrared camera to photograph radiator panels so engineers can assess how they have withstood the harsh space environment. Swanson and Acaba aborted an attempt to outfit the station's truss with attachments for experiments and cargo due to mechanical problems. They tethered the attachment system to the outside of the station so it wouldn't float away. The shuttle is scheduled to leave the space station on Wednesday and return to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next Saturday. NASA has up to nine more flights to finish outfitting the $100 billion station and a final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope before retiring its three-ship shuttle fleet in 2010. (Additional reporting by Chris Baltimore; editing by Todd Eastham)
Russian special forces stand near the bodies of gunmen killed during fighting in the Karabudakhkentsky region, some 30 km (19 miles) south of the regional capital Makhachkala, March 21, 2009. The ...
