Attach Debris Panels Delivered Last December Onboard
Discovery
NASA tells ANN two
International Space Station cosmonauts successfully completed a
5-hour, 25-minute spacewalk from the Pirs docking compartment
airlock Wednesday, installing Service Module Debris Protection
(SMDP) panels and rerouting a Global Positioning System antenna
cable.
Additional SMDP panels will be installed on Zvezda during a
second spacewalk by the cosmonauts, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and
Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov, on June 6. During that spacewalk they
also will install a section of an Ethernet cable on the Zarya
module and a Russian experiment called Biorisk on Pirs.
Yurchikhin, the lead spacewalker, EV1, and Kotov, EV2, wore
Russian Orlan spacesuits. It was the first spacewalk for both.
After leaving the Pirs airlock at 3:05 p.m. EDT, the
spacewalkers moved to the Strela 2, one of the hand-operated cranes
at the base of Pirs. They attached an extension to the Strela boom.
With Kotov on the end of the extension, Yurchikhin extended the
boom to a point over Pressurized Mating Adaptor 3 (PMA-3), on the
Unity Node, a distance of about 60 feet.
Yurchikhin, with guidance from Kotov, maneuvered the Strela end
effector to a grapple fixture on the SMDP Adaptor, a stowage rack.
It is attached to PMA-3 and held three bundles of SMDP panels, a
total of 17 of them. The assembly has been dubbed the "Christmas
Tree."
Once the Christmas Tree was attached to Strela and released from
PMA-3, Yurchikhin moved it and Kotov back to the small diameter of
Zvezda. Yurchikhin joined Kotov there, and together they secured it
to a grapple fixture on Zvezda.
They then left the SMDP task and moved aft on Zvezda's large
diameter. There they rerouted a cable for a Global Positioning
System to be used with the European Automated Transfer Vehicle
(ATV). The ATV is an unpiloted cargo carrier with almost twice the
capacity of the Progress cargo craft. It is scheduled to make its
first launch later this year.
That done, they moved
back to the Christmas Tree on the forward end of Zvezda, where they
removed and opened one of the three bundles of debris panels. That
bundle, No. 4, held five panels. The aluminum panels vary in size
but are about an inch thick. They typically measure about 2 by 3
feet and weigh 15 to 20 pounds.
Yurchikhin and Kotov installed the five panels on Zvezda's
conical section, the area between Zvezda's large and small
diameters.
Six SMDPs from bundle No. 1 were installed during an August 16,
2002, spacewalk by Expedition 5 Commander Valery Korzun and Flight
Engineer Peggy Whitson. Those SMDPs were delivered to the station
by Endeavour during STS-111 in June 2002.
The remaining three bundles and their adaptor were delivered by
Discovery during STS-116 last December and attached to PMA-3 by
spacewalkers Bob Curbeam and Sunita Williams. Williams was
intravehicular officer for Wednesday's spacewalk, advising and
keeping the spacewalkers on schedule.
After the installation task, the spacewalkers moved back to Pirs
and into the airlock. Hatch closure marking the end of the
spacewalk was at 8:30 pm.
(Photos courtesy of NASA)
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