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Astronauts Complete First Spacewalk
Houston TX (SPX) Nov 20, 2009 Mission Specialists Mike Foreman and Robert Satcher completed the first spacewalk of the STS-129 mission. The 6-hour, 37-minute spacewalk wrapped up at 4:01 p.m. EST. Foreman and Satcher installed a spare S-band antenna structural assembly brought up in Atlantis' cargo bay. The equipment is being stored on the Z1 segment of the station's truss system, and to get it there Satcher rode the station's robotic arm, driven by Mission Specialist Leland Melvin, Commander Charles Hobaugh and Pilot Barry Wilmore. Foreman next installed a set of cables along the Destiny laboratory for the station's future space-to-ground antenna and swapped out a handrail on the Unity node with a bracket that will be used to route an ammonia cable to the Tranquility node when it arrives next year. Meanwhile Robert Satcher lubricated the latching snares on the station's mobile base system. The spacewalkers also deployed the outboard Payload Attach System (PAS) on the Earth-facing side of the Starboard 3 truss. The PAS will allow future missions to store spare parts to the station's truss segment for future use. After finishing all their scheduled chores with two hours to spare, Foreman and Satcher were assigned a task that had been planned for the second spacewalk. They deployed the outboard Payload Attach System on the Earth-facing side of the Starboard 3 truss, after overcoming some initial difficulties. This was the first of three STS-129 spacewalks, the 228th conducted by U.S. astronauts, the fourth for Foreman and the first for Satcher. It was the 134th in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance, totaling 837 hours, 28 minutes. It was the 106th spacewalk out of the space station, totaling 650 hours, 13 minutes. Meanwhile, inside the station, further work is going on to prepare the station for the arrival of the Tranquility node. Station Commander Frank De Winne and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams are working at the port hatch of the Harmony node to rewire data, power and cooling lines and air flow connections that will be connected to Tranquility. De Winne and Williams will continue working on the project over several days during the STS-129 mission. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links STS-129 Mission Overview Station at NASA Station and More at Roscosmos S.P. Korolev RSC Energia Watch NASA TV via Space.TV Space Station News at Space-Travel.Com
ESA Calls For Ideas For Climate Experiments On The ISSParis, France (ESA) Nov 04, 2009 ESA's Directorate of Human Spaceflight, with support from the Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes, announces a Call for Ideas (CFI) to scientific institutes and industries aimed to obtain an indication of interest in research for global climate change studies using the International Space Station (ISS) in the 2012-2020 timeframe. The consequences of global changes in our ... read more |
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