Washington: US astronauts Thursday completed
the second of three planned spacewalks from the shuttle
Atlantis on its rendezvous with the International Space
Station.
Mission Specialists Stephen Bowen and Michael Good
completed their seven-hour spacewalk at 1:47 pm (local time),
finishing a checklist of housekeeping chores that included
tightening up bolts connecting the space-to-ground antenna
dish and boom.
They also removed the tether that had been holding the
dish and boom together and released the launch locks, allowing
the antenna dish to rotate.
During a first spacewalk on Monday, Atlantis astronauts
installed a space-to-ground communications antenna and a spare
parts platform on Dexter, the two-armed robotic device on the
orbiting ISS.
The shuttle and its crew of six docked with the orbiting
space lab Sunday, about 350 kilometres above the South
Pacific.
During the 13-day mission, Atlantis and its crew will
unload more than 12 tons of equipment, including the
communications antenna, power storage batteries, and a
radiator.
The voyage is the last scheduled mission for Atlantis,
which first launched in 1985 and has logged some 115 million
miles in its career.
Only two more shuttle launches remain -- one in September
for Discovery and the final blast off for Endeavour in
November -- before the curtain falls on this era of human
spaceflight. (AFP)
