Astronauts Mike Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams spent another day in space on Sunday, continuing the process of switching over the International Space Station’s power and cooling systems. Spacewalks are pretty important in themselves, but during the journey outside, Williams broke the record for the most time spent spacewalking by a woman.
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Spacewalkers Begin Switching Over the Station’s Cooling System
Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Sunita Williams spent nearly 8 hours outside on the International Space Station on Wednesday, beginning the process of reconfiguring the station’s power and cooling systems.
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Discovery Pulls Away from the Station
After 8 days docked together, and 4 spacewalks, the astronauts on board the International Space Station and the space shuttle Discovery big farewell to one another and closed the hatch. Discovery then detached from the station and drifted slowly away. Astronauts on board captured a series of photographs of the station as they pulled away.
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Astronauts Fold Up a Solar Panel on the Final Spacewalk
On their fourth and final trip outside the International Space Station, US astronaut Robert Curbeam and Sweden’s Christer Fuglesang convinced a misbehaving solar panel to fold up nicely. The team suited up and began their spacewalk on Monday at 1910 GMT (2:10 pm EST). Working with the panel was hard, slow work, eventually requiring about five hours of poking panels and shaking the storage box to get the stuck sections to fold up properly. With the solar panel safely folded away, the station’s new panels are free to rotate to face the Sun and generate the maximum amount of electricity.
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Astronauts Working to Fold Arrays
Mission Specialists Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang have gone back outside the International Space Station to try and get its troublesome solar arrays to retract properly. Imagine a big fold out map, that’s supposed to go back on exactly the same folds. It’s not folding back up again, and nothing they tried from inside fixed it. Time to do this hands on.
Curbeam and Fuglesang stepped out around 2pm EST, and they should get back in around 8:25 pm EST, after more than six hours in space.
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Jules Verne Spends 21 Days in Space, Here on Earth
ESA’s new Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, has recently spent 21 days in a chamber that simulated the cold, radiation and vacuum of space. And it passed with flying colours. The 20-tonne spacecraft will eventually be attached to the top of an Ariane 5 rocket in the summer of 2007, and flown to the International Space Station. A whole fleet of these spacecraft will eventually be built, transferring replacement cargo to the station, and then serving as disposable garbage cans, burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Station’s Solar Panels Retracted Halfway
Shuttle astronauts spent a frustrating day today, trying to get the International Space Station’s solar wings retracted. NASA was hoping to retract the wings fully to allow new permanent solar panels to rotate to face the Sun and begin generating electricity. Astronauts did get the wings partially retracted; far enough to allow the larger wings to rotate, so NASA is considering the day a success. A spacewalk might be scheduled later in the week, for astronauts to manually assist folding the array.
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First STS-116 Space Walk Wraps Up
Construction is continued on the International Space Station today, when the crew of STS-116 went outside on their first spacewalk to attach the P5 truss segment. Bob Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang did the spacewalking, while Joan Higginbotham and Sunita Williams worked the robot arm to assist the construction. Two more spacewalks are planned during STS-116 to reconfigure and redistribute power generated by the solar arrays.
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Progress 23 Docks with the Station
An unpiloted Progress 23 cargo ship docked with the International Space Station on Thursday, delivering a new load of supplies. On board the ship is more than 2 tonnes of food, air, fuel, water and additional equipment. There was a bit of a glitch with the docking, however. Flight controllers weren’t able to confirm if an antenna on the spacecraft was fully retracted before it docked. After a 3-hour delay, they finally gave the command to partially dock the spacecraft. Further latches will be closed on Friday to complete the docking operation.
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Cargo Ship Blasts Off for the Station
A new shipment of supplies is headed towards the International Space Station after this morning’s launch of a Russian-built Progress cargo spacecraft. The rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1341 GMT (9:41 am EDT), and reached orbit a few minutes later. It’s carrying 2.5 tons of food, air, water and other supplies, and will dock with the Zvezda module on the International Space Station on Thursday morning.
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