spacetoday.net: Astronauts complete second ISS spacewalk

Posted: Wed, Jul 18, 2001, 11:34 AM ET (1534 GMT)
STS-104 EVA 2 (NASA)

Two NASA astronauts completed the second of three planned spacewalks outside the International Space Station Tuesday night despite a computer glitch that threatened to derail the EVA. Astronauts Mike Gernhardt and Jim Reilly spent six and a half hours outside the shuttle Atlantis Tuesday night, starting at 11:04 pm EDT (0304 GMT Wednesday). The two astronauts installed two oxygen tanks and one nitrogen tank -- one more tank than originally planned -- to the exterior of the new Quest airlock module during their EVA. The beginning of the spacewalk was delayed when one of the three control computers on the station suffered a hard drive failure earlier in the day, similar to those that crippled the station during the last shuttle mission in April. The ISS crew was able to bring the computer back online by resetting its software, and no other problems with the computers were reported. Gernhardt and Reilly are scheduled to conduct one final spacewalk during the STS-104 mission on Friday night, one day later than planned to give the shuttle crew time to catch up on tasks they fell behind on earlier in the week. That spacewalk will be the first to use the new Quest airlock module, rather than the shuttle's airlock.