Spacewalk Success! ISS Astronauts Finish Up Spacewalk
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Astronauts finished up their 2nd spacewalk in 3 days outside the International Space Station this afternoon.
Flight Engineers Suni Williams and Aki Hoshide ventured outside the orbiting outpost and completed the installation of a Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on Wednesday.
The astronauts also installed a camera on the space station’s robotic arm, Canadarm 2. Flight Engineer Joe Acaba operated the Canadarm 2 and monitored the space walkers from inside the station.
During the spacewalk, Hoshide rode the Canadarm 2 attached to a portable foot restraint to the MBSU worksite.
The spacewalk ran into complications last week due to a possible misalignment and damaged threads where a bolt needed to be placed when attempting to install the MBSU.
Last week’s spacewalk lasted eight hours and 17 minutes, making it the third longest in the U.S. spaceflight history. The mission was originally scheduled for 6.5 hours before mission controllers and the astronauts ran into problems installing the MBSU.
The astronauts were able to fix the problems, and successfully install the unit during the six hour and 28 minutes spacewalk today.
Williams passed up Peggy Whitson during Wednesday’s journey outside the laboratory for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut.
Whitson worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks. Williams has conducted six spacewalks for a total of 44 hours and two minutes.
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2012-09-06 18:23:23
Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112687921/iss-spacewalk-090512/
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