spacetoday.net: Cosmonauts complete ISS shield work

Posted: Thu, Jun 7, 2007, 1:59 PM ET (1759 GMT)
ISS EVA on 2007 June 6 (NASA)

Two spacewalking cosmonauts completed the installation of shields on the exterior of an International Space Station module on Wednesday to protect it from micrometeorite and orbital debris impacts. Cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov spent five hours and 37 minutes outside the station, starting at 10:23 am EDT (1423 GMT), with the primary mission of installing 12 shields to a portion of the Zvezda service module. The two had installed five similar shields during an EVA on May 30. In addition to the shield work, the two also installed an Ethernet cable on the Zarya module and deployed a Russian experiment on the exterior of the Pirs module. The work went smoothly, with the two often ahead of schedule. During the spacewalk the two cosmonauts noted a small hole in the Zarya module, about a half-centimeter in diameter, presumably caused by a micrometeorite or orbital debris impact. The damage is not considered serious, however. The third member of the ISS crew, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, monitored the EVA from inside the station.