Was Postponed For Repair To Solar Panel

On Friday, Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko successfully completed a six-and-a-half hour excursion outside the International Space Station, to finish up work they'd originally planned to accomplish last week, when the shuttle Discovery was still berthed to the station.

As ANN reported, NASA opted to push off the spacewalk when it became clear the time would be needed instead to repair a tear in one of the solar panels attached to a relocated truss segment.

The primary goal of Friday's spacewalk was to prepare the shuttle docking port for relocation from its current berth on the Destiny laboratory, to its new home on the recently-installed Harmony module, reports Reuters.

During the spacewalk, Whitson and Malenchenko disconnected electrical cables routing power to visiting shuttles, and unplugged other electrical connections between the two nodes.

Flight engineer Daniel Tani is slated to use the station's mobile robotic crane to move the docking port from Destiny to Harmony on Monday. Power, cooling, and data lines will be connected between the two during two subsequent spacewalks, planned ahead of the December 6 launch of the shuttle Atlantis.

In order to make that timeframe, ISS crewmembers will need to work double-time... as about five days of work need to be shaved off the crew's schedule, to complete work in time for Atlantis' arrival.

"Basically, we're taking our plan a couple weeks at a time now," said station flight director Holly Ridings. "Our focus is to keep the (shuttle) launch in December and it'd be great if we can make the beginning of that window."

The two spacewalkers encountered a few problems, including the attachment of a bulky handrail... which flight directors told the spacewalkers to leave off.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html