Reuters: Science News: Cosmonauts ready space station for new module

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Cosmonauts ready space station for new module Aug 20th 2012, 17:29 By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Mon Aug 20, 2012 1:29pm EDT CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two veteran spacewalkers floated outside the International Space Station on Monday to prepare the orbital outpost for a new module and beef up its living quarters against micrometeorite and debris impacts, officials said. Dressed in spacesuits, station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko opened the hatch on the station's Pirs airlock at 11:37 a.m. EDT (1537 GMT) to begin a 6-1/2 hour spacewalk to relocate a construction crane, install debris shields and release a small satellite into orbit. The spacewalk was delayed about an hour while engineers assessed a leak or leaks between Pirs and Russian segments of the station, a $100 billion laboratory for microgravity experiments and technology testing that flies about 250 miles above Earth. "It is difficult to determine which compartment is leaking," a flight controller at the Russian mission control center near Moscow radioed to the cosmonauts, who suited up for their spacewalk at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT). "We're in no rush," replied Padalka, a veteran of eight previous spacewalks. Engineers monitored pressure readings in the modules for several minutes before clearing the cosmonauts to proceed with the spacewalk. Padalka and Malenchenko, who has made four previous spacewalks, plan to move a hand-operated crane, called Strela-2, from the outside of the Pirs docking module to Zarya, the cornerstone of the station. The expandable 46-foot (14-meter) boom will be needed next year to install a new Russia module to the station, a project of 15 countries. The United States completed construction of its part of the outpost last year and retired its three space shuttles. The cosmonauts also plan to release a 20-pound (nine-kg) spherical satellite and install five debris shields to the outside of the Zvezda module, which serves as the crew's primary living compartment. The satellite should stay in orbit for about three months serving as a target for Russian engineers working on computer models that evaluate orbital tracking. Other tasks on the spacewalkers' to-do list include retrieving a briefcase-sized experiment that has been exposing various materials to the harsh environment of space. NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, both station flight engineers, are scheduled to make a spacewalk on August 30 to replace a power relay unit on the station's truss, set up power cables for the Russian laboratory module scheduled to launch next year and install a thermal cover on a docking port. (Editing by Tom Brown and Eric Beech) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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