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Space Station's New Wings About To Get Stretched

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Mar 20, 2009 8:39 am US/Eastern

Space Station's New Wings About To Get Stretched

Unfurling Of Solar Wings Scheduled To Begin At 11 a.m.

Should Last About 5 Hours

 CBS News Interactive: About The Space Shuttles
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ― The international space station's newly installed solar wings are about to get stretched.

Astronauts aboard the orbiting station-shuttle complex will start unfurling the two wings late Friday morning, by remote control.

NASA managers say they expect to be on pins and needles throughout the five-hour procedure. That's because the wings could get hung up or some of the panels could stick together. That's happened before on previous flights.

On Thursday, a pair of spacewalking astronauts successfully hooked up the $300 million framework that holds the folded-up wings. The spacewalk lasted six hours which was record time for a job like this.

Discovery delivered the new wings earlier this week. It's the last set of solar wings to be installed at the 10-year-old space station and will bring it to full power. It's also the last major American-made piece of the space station.

Six solar wings already are in place at the space station. The new ones will bring the number to eight, with four wings on each side. NASA needs the extra electrical power that the new wings will provide in order to boost the amount of research being conducted at the space station.

Two more spacewalks are scheduled while shuttle Discovery is docked to the space station. There should have been four spacewalks, but delays in launching the shuttle cut the mission short.

Discovery needs to leave the space station Wednesday so that a Russian spacecraft can bring up a fresh crew.

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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