Money Matters, Simplified.
Astronauts set up new deck on space station lab
by Jaspreet Kaur - July 19, 2009 - comments
As per NASA, the spacewalk on Saturday was the 201st by Americans since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin put their first steps on the moon 40 years ago
Cape Canaveral, July 19: Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour today achieved a major breakthrough when they set up a porch, to carry out experiments, on the huge space station.
With this, Japan has completed the creation of its Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory that cost $1 billion.
Supervising the 220-mile-high action was a really big task for the Mission Control officials because there were a record number of 13 people in the orbit. This operation was so huge that three shuttle flights were required to launch everything.
Spacemen David Wolf and Timothy Kopra were congratulated by the Mission Control team as they came back inside after the completion of the task.
Microphone problem
This feat was accomplished despite the problem posed by microphones, which made Wolf and Kopra’s voices hardly audible.
They could not be heard properly due to the disturbance caused by Kopra’s helmet microphones. Astronaut Christopher Cassidy was heard saying from inside the shuttle-station complex, “Dave, you’re unreadable.”
This difficulty continued throughout the whole 5½ hour spacewalk even though it did not affect the safety of the astronauts.
The whole issue started when the two microphone booms fitted in the cap worn by Kopra under his helmet stopped working. Actually the booms were not near his mouth and they were rendered immovable because of the helmet. The ventilation flow created all the static and no voice could be heard.
Kieth Johnson, the lead spacewalk officer in Mission Control, was quoted as saying, “Listening to the static throughout the whole (spacewalk) tends to wear you out more than you would expect. But I think we made it through.”
Repair work done successfully
Both the spacewalkers were also able to repair a platform for spare parts that was jammed some months back. They performed this task by using a specifically designed tool. However, they did not get time to mend a related platform that was on the other side of the outpost.
As per NASA, the spacewalk on Saturday was the 201st by Americans since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin put their first steps on the moon 40 years ago.
Mission Control officials said that Endeavour is working fine even as the evaluation of shuttle photos and other data is still going on.