NASA Makes Space Station Repairs

In A Dangerous Emergency Mission Astronaut Fixes Ripped Solar Panel

(CBS/AP)  Astronauts successfully unfurled a torn solar power wing at the international space station on Saturday after spacewalker Scott Parazynski cut loose a tangled clump of wires and patched everything up.

His emergency surgery saved the solar energy panel — and the space station.

In the tense buildup to the spacewalk — one of the most difficult and dangerous ever attempted — NASA repeatedly warned that station construction would have to be halted if the wing could not be fixed.

The prospect was so grave that NASA felt it had no choice but to put Parazynski practically right up against the swaying power grid, which was coursing with more than 100 volts of electricity. No other astronaut had ever been so far away from the safe confines of the cabin.

Even before Parazynski made his way back inside, the radio traffic was full of cheers and congratulations.

Shouts of "Yay! All right! Beautiful! Great news!" streamed from the linked shuttle-station complex once the wing was unfurled to its full 115-foot length. Mission Control promptly relayed thanks from NASA's top brass.

"It was an honor," Parazynski replied.

The commander of the docked shuttle Discovery, Pamela Melroy, who supervised the wing repairs, cautioned everyone to hold off on "the victory dance" until Parazynski and his spacewalking partner, Douglas Wheelock, were safely back inside. "Then we can all rejoice," she said.

It took almost an hour for Parazynski to be maneuvered back from the wing, riding on the end of an approximately 90-foot robotic arm extension. That's how long it took him to get out there, too.

Parazynski worked on the damage for more than two hours, cutting hinge and guide wires that became snarled and snagged the wing when it was being extended Tuesday. The astronauts had just relocated a massive beam at the space station, and finished extending its first solar power wing, when the second wing got hung up after extending only 90 feet.

Parazynski, 46, an emergency medical doctor before becoming an astronaut, looped five makeshift braces into the wing to reinforce a partially ripped hinge. They resembled big white stitches.

Throughout the repair, Parazynski used an L-shaped Teflon stick, wrapped with insulating tape, to keep the billowing solar wing away and to avoid being shocked. At times, as his shadow loomed large on the wing, gleaming orange and gold in the sunlight, he looked like a stick-wielding hockey player, all bundled up in his puffy space suit.

As Parazynski got ready to cut the snarled guide wire for the wing, he mentioned that it was a bit of a reach.

"It's what those monkey arms are for," Melroy told the 6-foot-2 astronaut. She said not too many other astronauts could do what he was doing.

"They don't have to," Parazynski replied with a laugh.

Parazynski counted down — "three, two, one, snip" — as he sliced the guide wire with a pair of cutters. To everyone's relief, the 90-foot length of cut wire retracted smoothly into its reel at the base of the wing as it was monitored by Wheelock.

Parazynski accidentally let go of his wire-cutting tool at one point, but caught it. A few hours later, he lost it for good. The astronauts inside the station spotted it drifting nearby.

"We're going to have to let it go ... not much we can do now," Parazynski said, hustling to get back indoors.

The spacewalk — the fourth for Discovery's space station visit — lasted more than seven hours. It wrapped up station construction work for the seven shuttle astronauts. The hatches between the linked spacecraft will close Sunday and the shuttle will pull away Monday. Landing is set for Wednesday.

Considerable work remains for the space station's three occupants.

They need to move the pressurized compartment that was delivered and installed by the Discovery crew, and conduct three spacewalks, before shuttle Atlantis can launch with the first of two new laboratories. That flight is targeted for early December.

NASA still has to figure out what to do about a rotary joint that isn't working right and can be used only sparingly to turn another set of solar power wings toward the sun. Metal shavings were found inside the joint during a spacewalk last Tuesday, apparently the result of grinding parts.

[andor3]

Bravo to NASA! not only on a remarkable success and a beautiful example of calculated risk taking, but even more so because the right-wing folks hate this--they have been trying to make everyone believe that government is incompetent and inefficient.

Then NASA goes and does something amazing and inspiring--again.

[prairiefox1]

SO MUCH FOR FLIMSY JUNK! EVEN JAPAN WOULD BE EMBARRASSED TO PRODUCE THAT! I AM SURE CHINA WOULD HAVE SECOND THOUGHTS BEFORE TRYING TO PRODUCE THAT!
THEY DO HAVE HIGHER STANDARDS!

[rick_vt]

Too many wacked out comments that are totally off topic. --- A huge bravo is in order to all on the ground and up in space for a job well done! ---

[lastdance4]

RE :
CBS Law Offices

Explain this Chronic ...Habitual...and Harassing - Political Spam -
Posted by : NHProphet

Every day - All Weekend long within most of the topics on
The CBS News Site

Lastdance

[goldesprit]

Great work!

Class act, wonderful how a really desperately needed repair was done with some real humility and intelligence.

Bravo!
I hope more people will appreciate that this was not a fiction movie, as millions are accustomed to.

Thank you.

[GRPDiver]

snidegrass, I want some of what you are smoking ... the ramblings of a loney tunes charatcter ... must be good stuff.

[kerry4ever]

Parazynski "lost his wire cutting tool". Why with all the billions spend on this program don''t NASA find a means of securing tools to the astronaut. Maybe a piece of twine would do. It''s not rocket science.

[lastdance4]

RE : NHProphet

Take your... Chronic ...Habitual...Harassing - Political Spam - elsewhere

L:astdance

[downtowner97]

It seems so odd to me that the US feels the need to repeat all the experiments the soviets conducted decades ago. What new science is coming out of the space station?

I don''t want to sound like I''m down on space exploration. I think the work JPL is doing with the Mars rovers is exceptional and worth the money. Having people flying around in space with the hundreds of communications satellites doesn''t really impress me, and I don''t think we''re learning anything. For the price of the space station, we could have rovers on Ganymede, Europa, and other very interesting places.

The ISS just reminds me of kids tent camping in the back yard.

[nordeck52]

I''m very impressed by the success of this repair. An extremely risky job, yes, but it was necessary. Well done!

On a side note, what''s with all this garbage here about Ron Paul and George Bush? What do either of them have to do with the International Space Station? What does the Bible have to do with it? I even saw something about toilet paper in one of these posts. *shakes head* Perhaps it''s better I don''t ask. Probably safer that way. .

[reporter2112]

Like They Say, A picture maybe worth a thousand words...
www.poconocommunitynews.com

[hawksprings]

"About the Bible or whichever version you are using, it is nothing more than a fairly well written novel, which could have been written by any number of todays or yesterdays novelists. A figment of somebodies way out imagination. Doug"
Posted by az97202

Huh? The Bible is a compilation of books written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years.

You need to do some more research on it before you dismiss it out of hand as a "figment of somebody''s way out imagination."

[nothappyatall]

Hope the thing completely tears apart, this Bush regime spy playform- secret military use weapon needs to be totally disabled permanently.
With BUSH so heavily behind finishing this as quickly as possible, you KNOW theres something a lot more sinister going on that we don''t know about for part of it''s end use. Now would be an excellent time for some devastating disaster to happen to it in order to eliminate the future threat this thing poses.

[barbaraf4]

I as in Icarus -- 1979 Posted by Amazedd

I don''t understand your context. I know who Icarus was. Please clarify.

[amazedd]

I as in Icarus -- 1979

[adasher1]

hmmmmm, the bibles of the world say nothing of toilet paper, jesus never mentioned it either, yet mankind invented it after I bet much study and research.....I suspect that, since there is no god because we were not sent to everlasting hell for the toilet pape caper, that we likewise will not be sent to eternal hell for our study and research in space, which this jesus guy never mentioned either.

[chavico]

Does the Bible predict that there may be life in other planets??? Who would have thought about 2ooo years ago that mankind would be able to explore space? I dont know. Probably nobody in this earth knows it either.

[undermyboot]

It never explicitly says man should explore space in the Bible, so it must be against God. Astronauts and their support staff are therefore heretics and should be burned at the stake. (Coming to your neighborhood through the good auspices of the coming theocratic dictatorship in the USA)

[nggr]

hmmmm.
i dont know, did jesus say we could explore space?
i dont think any of this stuff exists.