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Nov 21, 2008 10:46 am US/Eastern
Shuttle, Astronauts Prep For Mid-Mission Reboost
Astronauts Have A Half-Day Of Work Friday
Third Spacewalk Set To Take Place Saturday
Bag Of Tools Worth $100,000 Floated Away During 1st Spacewalk
HOUSTON (AP) ―
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Astronauts Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen begin the first of four planned spacewalks during the shuttle Endeavour's visit to the Int'l Space Station.
NASA
Astronauts at the international space station only have to work a half-day Friday but they'll be busy.
The schedule includes work on a urine-recycling contraption and firing the space shuttle's thrusters to boost the station's orbit. Then, after a news conference, astronauts get to reboost their own energy and get the rest of the day off.
Endeavour's extra push will elevate the docked space shuttle and space station complex about a mile. That will put the space station at the right altitude to receive a Russian Progress spaceship scheduled to deliver cargo to the orbiting outpost three days after Endeavour starts heading back to Earth on Thanksgiving. The space station generally stays in the range of 200 to 220 miles above Earth.
The recycling system reclaims urine and sweat and turns it into drinkable water, essential when the station takes on three additional residents. The astronauts had hoped to run a test batch of urine through the contraption Thursday, but a caution alarm usually caused by combustion delayed those plans. Flight controllers believe it was a false alarm because they didn't notice smoke or a combustible odor.
"These are the growing pains we expect to see," said flight director Ginger Kerrick. "These are very complicated pieces of equipment with very complicated software to control them."
The astronauts were going to delay the urine test until flight controllers figure out what's wrong, but they planned to test another part of the system that purifies water. Samples from the recycling system will need to be analyzed on Earth before station crew members can use the machine sometime next year. Once running, the system will help the space station support six residents instead of the current three inhabitants.
Just as the alarm on the urine recycling system went off inside the space station Thursday evening, two spacewalkers wrapped up a nearly seven-hour spacewalk outside.
To everyone's relief, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Shane Kimbrough deftly stepped through their work without any mishaps. During Tuesday's spacewalk, Stefanyshyn-Piper's tool bag slipped away while she was trying to clean grease leaked from a gun used to lubricate a jammed solar wing joint outside the space station.
There were two small hitches at the very end of Thursday's spacewalk: Kimbrough had trouble communicating with Mission Control and also had elevated levels of carbon dioxide in his spacesuit. Neither problem put the astronaut in danger. The communication problem was likely caused by a bump to his headset's volume control.
"The (carbon dioxide) level never got to a level that we would have been concerned that it would cause him any problems," said John Ray, lead spacewalk officer. "We were just managing it to make sure we got him inside before it got to that level, and we did."
There's another spacewalk planned for Saturday. Spacewalkers Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen will finish their work on the starboard solar alpha rotary joint that controls the International Space Station's power generating solar array. The spacewalk is slated to last seven hours.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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