Schlegel Cleared For Wednesday Spacewalk

The STS-122 and International Space Station crews continued setting up and activating the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory Tuesday.

Station Flight Engineer Leopold Eyharts and Mission Specialist Hans Schlegel, both European Space Agency astronauts, opened the hatches to the new Columbus laboratory at 0908 EST.

Just prior to hatch opening, Eyharts remarked, "This is a great moment and Hans and I are very proud to be here and to ingress for the first time the Columbus module."

Tuesday was a big day for Schlegel for another reason... as he received the all-clear from NASA, to take part in Wednesday's scheduled spacewalk outside the International Space Station. As ANN reported, Schlegel was bumped from the first spacewalk, due to a bout with a still-unidentified illness earlier in the mission.

Along with Mission Specialist Rex Walheim, Schlegel will "camp out" in the station’s Quest airlock to prepare for Wednesday’s spacewalk, slated for 0935 EST. The astronauts are staying in the airlock to purge nitrogen from their bodies prior to exiting the station.

The spacewalkers will remove the Nitrogen Tank Assembly (NTA), part of the station’s thermal control system, from the P1 truss. Once they have completed this task, they will install a new NTA, and the old one will be transferred to the shuttle’s payload bay for return to Earth.

(Image courtesy of NASA)

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.esa.int