Washington: Endeavour shuttle astronauts
concluded the second spacewalk of their trip early today,
moving forward in their work on an observation dome as NASA
said the crew's mission would be extended by a day.
US astronaut Bob Behnken and his British-born partner
Nicholas Patrick began their nearly six-hour hour spacewalk at
0550 IST today and wrapped it up at 1344 IST.
It was the second excursion in three days for Behnken and Patrick. They have one more spacewalk to finish installing the Tranquility room and its attached observation deck, the last major building blocks of the 11-year-old space station. Endeavour carried up the pieces last week.
Once ammonia coolant is flowing through the hoses, Tranquility will begin surging with power. Its systems cannot be turned on unless there is a way to get rid of the heat generated by the equipment inside.
The $400 million-plus Tranquility and lookout — supplied by the European Space Agency — will hold life-support systems as well as exercise equipment and a toilet.
The domed lookout is essentially an enormous bay window that will provide breathtaking views of Earth. Its seven windows includes the largest ever flown in space: a round one 31 inches across.
While preparing the observation deck for its planned move to another side of Tranquility, the astronauts could not put on an insulating cover at the hatch. It simply did not fit; something interfered with the lock-down bars.
Meanwhile, International Space Station Commander Jeff
Williams and other members of the crew continued outfitting
Tranquility's interior, including setting up the ventilation
system and configuring racks.
Early yesterday, the crew members outfitting Tranquillity
were unable to install a center disk cover on the module's
outboard docking port due to interference with the cover's
attach mechanism from hardware inside the cupola.
That cover protects the docking mechanism from debris and
temperature extremes when there's no module attached to it.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, February 14, 2010, 18:31