Sunita Williams out for another back-to-back spacewalks
| Seema Hakhu Kachru
Houston, Feb 8 (PTI) Indian American flight engineer Sunita Williams and International Space Station Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria are venturing out once again for their third spacewalk in nine days.
“Beautiful day, I’m ready,” Sunita said.
The three spacewalks, termed EVAs 6, 7, and 8 because there were five previous station spacewalks from the US airlock Quest during increments, began at 0726 CST (1856 IST) today when no shuttle was present.
NASA spacewalkers on mission are packing tools aboard an equipment cart outside the International Space Station (ISS) as they prepare to head to their first worksite: a pair of rotary joint motor controllers outside the ISS.
The astronauts will haul the cart, known as a Crew Equipment Translational Aid (CETA), along the space station’s main backbone-like truss to the Port 3 (P3) segment to remove a pair of thermal covers from the two pieces of ISS hardware.
The Expedition 14 spacewalkers today tasks include removing protective thermal shrouds from a pair of Rotary Joint Motor Controllers on the space station’s Port 3 (P3) truss.
They’ll then haul in a pair of unneeded, expansive sun shades (each larger than a king-size bed sheet) and wrap them up into bundles smaller than an outdoor garbage can before tossing them overboard.
They are also slated to deploy attachment devices for a future spare parts platform on the P3 truss before heading up to the station’s space shuttle docking port on the Pressurised Mating Adapter-2 at the tip of US Destinay laboratory. PTI source PTI http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.mindbodynsoul.com Tags:BLOGS BLOGS.MINDBODYNSOUL.COM houston INDIA indian american INTERNATIONAL NEWS international spce station commander Internet iss nasa ONLINE SCIENCE SCIENTISTS SUCCESS sunita williams US USA web WORLD AFFAIRS |
