• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Canadian Dave Williams Helps Replace Space Station Part on Second Spacewalk

Posted on: Monday, 13 August 2007, 15:21 CDT

HOUSTON (CP) - Canadian astronaut Dave Williams, along with American astronaut Rick Mastracchio, removed a broken gyroscope from the International Space Station on Monday during a spacewalk.

The pair floated out of the space station's airlock just after 11:30 a.m. EDT for their second spacewalk in three days. After carefully unbolting one of four gyroscopes that help control the space station's orientation, Mastracchio and Williams slowly swung the 272-kilogram piece of equipment onto a temporary storage platform.

Williams and Mastracchio then began to replace it with another gyroscope that the shuttle Endeavour carried to the station.

During Williams and Mastracchio's first spacewalk on Saturday, they installed a new beam to the International Space Station.

Williams is set to go on a record-breaking third spacewalk on Friday, which would make the Saskatoon-born and Montreal-raised astronaut the Canadian with the most time spent floating freely in space.

And Williams' name has been mentioned if NASA decides there is a need to repair a gouge on the shuttle's underside.

Endeavour carried seven astronauts, including Williams, to the space station.

During its liftoff from Florida last week, a chunk of insulating foam fell off and hit the shuttle, carving out a 7.6-centimetre-long gouge that penetrates all the way through the thermal shielding on Endeavour's underside.

NASA engineers are trying to determine whether the marred area can withstand the searing heat of re-entry through the atmosphere when the shuttle returns to Earth at the end of its mission.

The shuttle Columbia was destroyed in 2003 when hot atmospheric gases seeped into a hole in its wing and melted the wing from the inside out. A foam strike at liftoff caused the gash.

"We have really prepared for exactly this case, since Columbia," said John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team. "We have spent a lot of money in the program and a lot of time and a lot of people's efforts to be ready to handle exactly this case."

Endeavour has been docked with the space station since Friday. It will remain there until Aug. 20 for a record 10-day stay, three days more than originally scheduled.

Astronauts plan to conduct two more spacewalks on Wednesday and Friday, and they could add the gouge repairs to their to-do list. Depending on the extent of the damage, astronauts can apply protective paint, screw on a shielding panel, or squirt in filler goo.

The two Russian cosmonauts aboard the space station lost radio communication with the Moscow mission control centre overnight when a line apparently was damaged by a nearby construction project, station flight director Heather Rarick said.

The cosmonauts will be able to use American radios, and the outage was not expected to affect Monday's work.

Source: Canadian Press

More News in this Category