Astronauts bolt down space station addition
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, December 12, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronauts guided into place and bolted down a 2-ton addition to the international space station Tuesday, making the first of three difficult spacewalks during space shuttle Discovery’s stay at the orbiting lab.
The spacewalk started several hours after NASA engineers studying Discovery’s heat shield for damage recommended against any extra inspection of the spacecraft’s belly and wings.
From outside, U.S. astronaut Robert Curbeam, a veteran spacewalker, and the European Space Agency’s Christer Fuglesang guided mission specialists Joan Higginbotham and Sunita “Suni” Williams as they used a robotic arm from inside the station to install the $11 million addition along the space lab’s truss in a space where clearance at times was less than 3 inches.
The settings on the robotic arm had to be adjusted in order to place the segments’ corners properly into alignment with the corners of the truss.
The spacewalkers, who are tethered at all times, later replaced a camera outside the station and moved a handle that was used to grip the new segment. The entire spacewalk lasted nearly seven hours.
The engineers’ recommendation against an extra inspection doesn’t mean the shuttle was cleared of damage, since experts were still reviewing data, but it was an optimistic sign. Later in the day, mission managers approved the recommendation.
The additional inspection had been considered for today to get a better look at dings spotted on the heat-resistant tiles on Discovery’s belly and the shuttle’s wings, where sensors detected “very low” readings on Sunday and Monday, possibly from shock waves and a micrometeoroid. Engineers also are interested in an orange cellophane-like material, used to keep nitrogen in place during launch, that was sticking out of the shuttle’s left external fuel tank door.
Another inspection of Discovery’s heat shield is planned next week after the shuttle undocks from the space station, and engineers plan to take that opportunity to study the area of the wing where the micrometeoroid may have struck.
