Spacewalkers prepare Harmony for its big move
CAPE CANAVERAL -- Two astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk at the international space station on Friday, smoothly picking up where the shuttle Discovery crew left off just days ago.
Commander Peggy Whitson and her Russian crewmate, Yuri Malenchenko, spent seven hours outside getting the space station's newest addition ready for its big move. They should have performed the spacewalk during Discovery's visit, but the work was put off after a solar wing ripped and demanded immediate attention.
The two cleared cables from the spot where the Harmony compartment will be relocated next week, and unfastened or plugged in nearly 40 power and data connections. It was a struggle to loosen some of them.
"You think somebody glued these on?" asked Whitson as she used brute force to free the connections.
"Looks like for the next (spacewalk) we'll need one of those hydraulic jaws-of-life machines," observed astronaut Daniel Tani, who orchestrated the spacewalk from inside.
Harmony, a pressurized chamber the size of a school bus, was delivered by Discovery late last month and installed in a temporary location. Harmony will serve as the docking port for European and Japanese laboratories.
Before NASA can launch its next shuttle mission, Harmony must be repositioned at the space station, a job that will require two more spacewalks and extensive robotic work over the next two weeks.
There is so much to do that the three space station residents will get only one day off a week for the foreseeable future — they'll even work Thanksgiving.
Friday's spacewalk got the crew off to a good start. The only trouble, other than tight connectors, was a hand rail that could not be bolted down and flaking-type damage to the mittens over Malenchenko's gloves, possibly a manufacturing defect. Both spacewalkers wore mittens to protect their gloves from ripping on sharp station edges, an increasingly common problem for astronauts.
They lugged back inside the protective cover from Harmony that they had removed and folded up. "Looking through the window here all I can see is a big aluminum foil," Tani said. "It looks like turkey cooking in the oven."
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