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| Image above: Expedition 14 Flight Engineer Sunita
Williams is pictured outside the International Space Station during
a spacewalk on Feb. 8. Image credit: NASA |
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Expedition 14 crew ready for Thursday's spacewalk
The Expedition 14 crew continued with preparations for a spacewalk this
Thursday.
Hatch opening is scheduled for 5 a.m. EST and the excursion will last
about 6 hours. The spacewalkers have conducted leak checks and have installed
lights and additional equipment on their Russian Orlan space suits.
The crew conducted its Orlan dry run Tuesday morning. Commander Michael
Lopez-Alegria, KE5GTK, and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, RZ3FT, began
preparing their Russian suits around 5 a.m. EST and donning their suits
for a communications and systems test.
Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin will participate in their increment’s
fifth spacewalk – a record for station crews. They will attempt
to free a stuck antenna on the ISS Progress 23 docked to the aft end of
the Zvezda service module. They will also check on navigation systems
in preparation for the summer docking of a European cargo craft known
as the Automated Transfer Vehicle.
Coming and going, or at least getting ready to go, haven't been easy
for the Progress 23 unpiloted cargo carrier docked at the aft port of
the International Space Station's Zvezda service module.
Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin and Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria will
leave the airlock of the Pirs docking compartment on a spacewalk aimed
at retracting a balky antenna of the Progress. The antenna did not fully
retract before the spacecraft docked Oct. 26.
Emptied of the more than 2.5 tons of equipment and supplies and filled
with station trash and unneeded equipment, the Progress is scheduled to
undock in April. Before that happens, Russian program officials want to
be sure the antenna will not interfere.
Tyurin, the lead spacewalker, and Lopez-Alegria are scheduled to begin
their spacewalk about 5 a.m. EST. They will wear Russian Orlan spacesuits,
both marked with red stripes.
After a brief pause to photograph a Russian satellite navigation antenna,
they'll move to the back of Zvezda to begin work on the Progress antenna,
which failed to retract automatically during the Progress' slow approach
to the station.
Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria have several options on how to accomplish the
antenna's retraction, beginning with trying to release a latch with a
punch and hammer. Additional options include cutting one or more of the
struts supporting the antenna.
Soon after its undocking, the Progress will be deorbited and burn on
re-entry.
Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria have a number of other planned tasks during
their six-hour spacewalk. They include inspection of an antenna for the
Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). The European unpiloted cargo craft has
more capacity than the Progress, and is scheduled to make its first trip
to the station later this year. The spacewalkers also will photograph
an ATV docking target.
They also plan to photograph a German experiment, swap out and photograph
a Russian experiment, inspect and mate hardware connectors and inspect
retention mechanisms and bolted joints on a hand-operated Strela crane
that helps transport people and equipment outside Pirs.
Finally, they'll stow two foot restraints on a ladder at Pirs before
ending the spacewalk.
The spacewalk will be the 81st for station assembly and maintenance,
the 53rd from the station and the 20th from Pirs.
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