CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A pair of spacewalkers manually shaking a stubborn solar array managed to free some stuck grommets Saturday, but not enough to fold the array up into a box properly.
The array was more than half retracted when astronauts Robert Curbeam and Sunita Williams approached it after completing their main spacewalk tasks. After scores of shakes and remote control commands to retract, the array folded another several degrees, eventually retracting 65 percent.
“We really commend you for a tremendous effort, an Olympian effort of our two shaking EVA members,” Mission Control radioed to the astronauts, using the technical acronym for spacewalk. The duo clocked a marathon 7 hour, 31 minute-spacewalk, the last two hours of which was spent working on the array.
Curbeam and Williams made progress on a problem that has vexed NASA since Wednesday. Earlier in the day, the space agency approved conducting a fourth, unplanned spacewalk if astronauts were unable to get the accordion-like array to fold up into a box properly. The pair pushed on the box, shaking the 115-foot array in an attempt to loosen wire tension and free stuck grommets.
It’s unclear whether NASA will go forth with that additional spacewalk. If carried out on Monday, it would delay space shuttle Discovery’s landing at the Kennedy Space Center by a day to Friday, and push back other activities such as undocking and a late inspection of the shuttle’s heat shield.
The partially retracted solar wing was part of the space station’s temporary power system. A primary goal of Discovery’s visit to the station was to rewire the lab and hook a new set of solar wings delivered in September onto the permanent electricity grid. To do that, NASA needed to retract the old solar panel so that the new ones had room to rotate with the movement of the sun to maximize the amount of electricity generated.
The old solar panel retracted enough to give the new ones clearance, but it did not fold all the way as NASA wanted.
The spacewalkers headed over to the array after completing the main task of their spacewalk. It was Curbeam’s third spacewalk in a week and Williams’ first ever.
Williams joined an elite group of eight other female spacewalkers. Only seven other U.S. women and a single Russian woman have participated in the 281 spacewalks taken since 1965.
Space shuttle Discovery’s astronauts were heading into the home stretch of their 12-day mission, which includes seven days at the space station. Discovery delivered a 2-ton, $11-million space station addition that was installed during the first spacewalk and planned to rotate out a station crew member upon undocking Monday.
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