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Wednesday, 27 November, 2002, 15:49 GMT
Astronauts complete spacewalk
The first of three spacewalks has been completed by astronauts on the latest shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
John Herrington and Michael Lopez-Alegria continued the construction work on the orbiting outpost. They installed clamps, removed locks and connected electrical cables between a new segment brought up by the shuttle and the existing structure. The girder, or truss, fitted to the ISS is part of the cooling system and will considerably increase the size of the station. The work has been carried out later than planned, after a number of problems delayed the launch of the shuttle Endeavour to the ISS by almost a month. New crew Endeavour blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US, last Saturday and safely docked two days later. The 16th shuttle mission to the ISS should have started in October, but the crew were grounded until November because of cracked fuel lines found throughout the shuttle fleet. On 11 November, there was another launch attempt, but this was aborted after a leak was discovered in the system that carries oxygen to the crew's helmets. The delay meant the current ISS resident crew, Expedition Five, had to spend six weeks longer in space than planned. The crew - astronaut Peggy Whitson and cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev - has been aboard the orbiting platform for almost six months. The Expedition Five astronauts, Kenneth Bowersox and Don Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who came up with Endeavour, will now take over. Robotic arm The mission will see a further two spacewalks to complete the installation of the truss. This truss is a 14-metre-long beam that will make up part of the support structure for the station's Active Thermal Control System. When finally completed, this section of the ISS will expand to about 109 metres. Michael Lopez-Alegria and John Herrington concluded the first of the walks in six hours and 45 minutes. Ken Bowersox and Expedition Five science officer Peggy Whitson helped manoeuvre the girder into place from inside the station, using the platform's robotic arm. The astronauts also fitted a wireless video system to the station's Unity module. This was the 47th spacewalk performed from the ISS. The next one is planned to take place on Thursday. The Expedition Six crew are scheduled to return to Earth in March 2003. |
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