Endeavour astronauts set for final spacewalk
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--Astronauts Michael Fincke and Gregory Chamitoff geared up Thursday for a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk early Friday, the fourth and final excursion planned by the Endeavour astronauts and the last space station EVA to be carried out by a visiting shuttle crew.
The spacewalk, the 159th devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, is scheduled to get underway around 12:46 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) when Fincke and Chamitoff switch their spacesuits to battery power.
In a pair of space milestones, Fincke and Chamitoff expect to push total space station EVA assembly time past the 1,000-hour mark -- the total stood at 995 hours and 13 minutes through 158 previous spacewalks -- and later today, Fincke will become the most experienced U.S. astronaut with more than 377 days in space during Endeavour's mission and two earlier long-duration space station expeditions.
Fincke will eclipse the previous U.S. record, held by chief astronaut Peggy Whitson, around 7 p.m. Friday, replacing her at 20th on the list of most experienced space fliers behind 19 Russians led by Sergei Krikalev, who has logged 803 days in space across six missions. Assuming Endeavour lands June 1 as planned, Fincke will pass cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and move into a tie with cosmonaut Valery Korzun for the 18th spot with 382 days off planet.
For identification, Fincke, call sign EV-1, will be wearing an unmarked spacesuit for today's EVA while Chamitoff, EV-3, will be wearing a suit with broken red stripes around the legs.
The primary goal of the spacewalk is to mount Endeavour's no-longer-needed 50-foot-long heat shield inspection boom on the front of the space station's power truss so it will be available after the shuttle fleet is retired to give lab crews additional reach when using the station's robot arm for maintenance or repairs.
To clear the way for the transfer, Endeavour's crew used the boom early Thursday to carry out a final inspection of the shuttle's heat shield to make sure the ship's nose cap and wing leading edge panels have not suffered any damage since a similar inspection the day after launch.
After exiting the space station's Quest airlock, Fincke and Chamitoff will set up foot restraints on the power truss and Endeavour pilot Gregory "Box" Johnson, operating the station's robot arm, will hand the boom to the two spacewalkers. After manually mounting the boom on attachment fixtures, Fincke will disconnect electrical cables leading to a no-longer-needed laser scanner and heat shield inspection camera.
Then they will remove the grapple fixture on the other end of the boom that was used by the shuttle's robot arm and replace it with a fixture designed for the station arm.
"That boom will be left behind on the space station with the idea that at some point if the space station has to do some work, it would give the robotic arm more reach if it could use this boom as well," Chamitoff said in a NASA interview. "We have left it up there before, we have the mechanisms in place to leave it up there.
"We'll be attaching that boom to the truss, locking it in place. Normally the shuttle arm grabs that boom at the end, and the station arm has a grapple fixture in the middle. But if we're going to use it on the station at some future point, you want to be able to grab it from the end. The grapple fixture at the end is not the right kind and we have to change it,so it'll be kind of fun for Mike.
"Because we're kind of tearing this thing apart in a way, we're taking off that end, replacing it with a station grapple fixture, and we have to cut some wires and pull this thing off completely and while we're doing that I'll be on the station robotic arm and Box will be flying me around. That'll be an exciting task to do."
After a few other minor maintenance tasks, Fincke and Chamitoff will call it a day. A mission status briefing is planned for 9 a.m.
Here is an updated timeline of the crew's planned activities for flight day 12 (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision I of the NASA television schedule; best viewed with fixed-width font):
CBS News
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--Astronauts Michael Fincke and Gregory Chamitoff geared up Thursday for a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk early Friday, the fourth and final excursion planned by the Endeavour astronauts and the last space station EVA to be carried out by a visiting shuttle crew.
The spacewalk, the 159th devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, is scheduled to get underway around 12:46 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) when Fincke and Chamitoff switch their spacesuits to battery power.
In a pair of space milestones, Fincke and Chamitoff expect to push total space station EVA assembly time past the 1,000-hour mark -- the total stood at 995 hours and 13 minutes through 158 previous spacewalks -- and later today, Fincke will become the most experienced U.S. astronaut with more than 377 days in space during Endeavour's mission and two earlier long-duration space station expeditions.
 |
| In this computer graphic, astronauts Michael Fincke and Gregory Chamitoff plan to store the shuttle Endeavour's heat shield inspection boom on the front of the International Space Station's main power truss to give the lab's robot arm additional reach for repairs or maintenance after the shuttle fleet is retired. (Credit: NASA) |
Fincke will eclipse the previous U.S. record, held by chief astronaut Peggy Whitson, around 7 p.m. Friday, replacing her at 20th on the list of most experienced space fliers behind 19 Russians led by Sergei Krikalev, who has logged 803 days in space across six missions. Assuming Endeavour lands June 1 as planned, Fincke will pass cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and move into a tie with cosmonaut Valery Korzun for the 18th spot with 382 days off planet.
For identification, Fincke, call sign EV-1, will be wearing an unmarked spacesuit for today's EVA while Chamitoff, EV-3, will be wearing a suit with broken red stripes around the legs.
The primary goal of the spacewalk is to mount Endeavour's no-longer-needed 50-foot-long heat shield inspection boom on the front of the space station's power truss so it will be available after the shuttle fleet is retired to give lab crews additional reach when using the station's robot arm for maintenance or repairs.
To clear the way for the transfer, Endeavour's crew used the boom early Thursday to carry out a final inspection of the shuttle's heat shield to make sure the ship's nose cap and wing leading edge panels have not suffered any damage since a similar inspection the day after launch.
After exiting the space station's Quest airlock, Fincke and Chamitoff will set up foot restraints on the power truss and Endeavour pilot Gregory "Box" Johnson, operating the station's robot arm, will hand the boom to the two spacewalkers. After manually mounting the boom on attachment fixtures, Fincke will disconnect electrical cables leading to a no-longer-needed laser scanner and heat shield inspection camera.
Then they will remove the grapple fixture on the other end of the boom that was used by the shuttle's robot arm and replace it with a fixture designed for the station arm.
"That boom will be left behind on the space station with the idea that at some point if the space station has to do some work, it would give the robotic arm more reach if it could use this boom as well," Chamitoff said in a NASA interview. "We have left it up there before, we have the mechanisms in place to leave it up there.
"We'll be attaching that boom to the truss, locking it in place. Normally the shuttle arm grabs that boom at the end, and the station arm has a grapple fixture in the middle. But if we're going to use it on the station at some future point, you want to be able to grab it from the end. The grapple fixture at the end is not the right kind and we have to change it,so it'll be kind of fun for Mike.
"Because we're kind of tearing this thing apart in a way, we're taking off that end, replacing it with a station grapple fixture, and we have to cut some wires and pull this thing off completely and while we're doing that I'll be on the station robotic arm and Box will be flying me around. That'll be an exciting task to do."
After a few other minor maintenance tasks, Fincke and Chamitoff will call it a day. A mission status briefing is planned for 9 a.m.
Here is an updated timeline of the crew's planned activities for flight day 12 (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision I of the NASA television schedule; best viewed with fixed-width font):
DATE/EDT...DD...HH...MM...SS...EVENT
05/26
07:56 PM...10...11...00...00...Crew wakeup (begin flight day 12)
08:56 PM...10...12...00...00...EVA-3: Hygiene break
09:21 PM...10...12...25...00...EVA-3: Crew lock depress to 10.2 psi
09:41 PM...10...12...45...00...EVA-3: Campout EVA prep
09:46 PM...10...12...50...00...ISS daily planning conference
11:11 PM...10...14...15...00...EVA-3: Spacesuit purge
11:26 PM...10...14...30...00...EVA-3: Spacesuit pre-breathe
05/27
12:16 AM...10...15...20...00...EVA-3: Crew lock depressurization
12:41 AM...10...15...45...00...Station arm (SSRMS) grapples inspection boom (OBSS)
12:46 AM...10...15...50...00...EVA-4: Spacesuits to battery power
12:51 AM...10...15...55...00...EVA-4: Egress and setup
12:51 AM...10...15...55...00...Shuttle arm (SRMS) ungrapples OBSS
01:16 AM...10...16...20...00...SSRMS moves OBSS to stow
01:21 AM...10...16...25...00...EVA-4: OBSS stow on station truss
02:16 AM...10...17...20...00...EVA-4: P6 power and data grapple fixture retrieve
03:41 AM...10...18...45...00...EVA-4/EV-2: OBSS EFGF/PDFG swap
03:41 AM...10...18...45...00...EVA-4/EV-1: OBSS EFGF/PDFG swap
05:01 AM...10...20...05...00...EVA-4/EV-1: Stow ETGF in TSA
05:21 AM...10...20...25...00...EVA-4/EV-2: OTP inspection
05:36 AM...10...20...40...00...EVA-4: ELC-3 Dexrre arm release
06:46 AM...10...21...50...00...EVA-4: Cleanup and ingress
07:16 AM...10...22...20...00...EVA-4: Airlock repressurization
07:31 AM...10...22...35...00...Spacesuit servicing
07:31 AM...10...22...35...00...SRMS powerdown
09:00 AM...11...00...04...00...Mission status briefing on NASA TV
09:11 AM...11...00...15...00...ISS daily planning conference
11:26 AM...11...02...30...00...ISS crew sleep begins
11:56 AM...11...03...00...00...STS crew sleep begins
01:00 PM...11...04...04...00...Daily video highlights reel on NASA TV
04:00 PM...11...07...04...00...MMT briefing on NASA TV
04:45 PM...11...07...49...00...Flight director update on NASA TV
06:45 PM...11...09...49...00...Flight director update replayon NASA TV
07:56 PM...11...11...00...00...Crew wakeup