Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko concluded a six-hour, 42-minute spacewalk Tuesday at 6:53 a.m. EDT. The cosmonauts began their spacewalk when they opened the hatches of the Pirs docking compartment at 12:11 a.m. This was the 147th spacewalk overall in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance.
The cosmonauts wore their Russian Orlan spacesuits to outfit the new Rassvet module for a Kurs automated rendezvous system capability for future dockings of Russian vehicles arriving at the station to link up to Rassvet. They also routed and mated Command and Data Handling cables on the Zvezda and Zarya modules.
A video camera was removed and replaced on the aft end of Zvezda then successfully tested. The old camera was safely jettisoned away from the station. The new camera will be used to provide television views of the final approach and docking of future European Automated Transfer Vehicles carrying cargo to the complex.
During the spacewalk, two objects were detected floating away from the station. One was tentatively identified as a cable clamp, left outside the station from a previous Russian spacewalk. That object and another, not conclusively identified, both departed well below the vicinity of the complex and pose no threat to the orbiting laboratory.
This was Kornienko’s first spacewalk and Yurchikhin’s fourth. Yurchikhin’s first three spacewalks occurred when he was commander of Expedition 15 in 2007.
The second spacewalk of Expedition 24 is planned for August 5 by Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson in U.S. spacesuits out of the Quest airlock. They will install a power cable to the Unity module in preparation for the installation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module during the STS-133 mission in November. A Portable Data Grapple Fixture will be installed on the Zarya module that will extend the reach of Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, and increase a spacewalker’s access for assembly or maintenance work. They also will jettison multi-layer insulation removed for the grapple fixture installation and will mate power connectors to Zarya.
Caldwell Dyson will be making the first spacewalk of her career. Wheelock will be conducting his fourth. His first three spacewalks occurred as a mission specialist during STS-120 in late 2007.
Adjusting their schedule to support Monday night’s spacewalk, the International Space Station operations team met late yesterday to review results of last week’s dry run for using Canadarm2 and its Dextre robotic helper to replace a failed Remote Power Control Module (RPCM) in the P1 truss. The team elected to defer additional work with Dextre until additional analysis of the forces required to remove the smart circuit breaker from its housing in the truss is completed.
The delay will not affect plans for the upcoming spacewalk by Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson. Power systems on the station are operating well with the failed RPCM in its current installed position.
For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
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