Space : One Collective Soul in Outer Space

A reality check on dreams for space: the repairsThe crews from the shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station had a farewell ceremony today and closed the hatch between the two craft. Discovery will undock tomorrow and prepare for its return to Earth on Wednesday.
It was a blubberfest.
This has been an intense mission - the planned tasks involved some of the toughest technical challenges in the history of the space station's construction process, and included adding a new room to the station, the Harmony module, and moving an enormous solar array and truss from its temporary position on top of the station to its far left side.
Astronaut Scott Parazynski worked along the truss assembly of the International Space Station on Saturday, preparing equipment for mounting on the boom extension.
NASA/Reuters

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But beyond those efforts, problems made the mission even tougher. The solar array tore as it was being re-deployed, setting off a scramble to come up with a spacewalk that could repair the tear and get the array functional before the shuttle left. Without that array fully extended and able to be rotated on its own rotary joint, space station construction would have been stalled and upcoming missions delayed.
And on top of that, spacewalkers detected damage to the rotary joint on the right side of the station, one that keeps the right-side solar arrays facing the sun - a problem that will have to be addressed down the road. In a high-risk, high-stakes spacewalk Dr. Scott E. Parazynski fixed the array on Saturday.
So it's no surprise that the farewells are more than a little emotional. Clayton Anderson, who spent 137 days as a space-station crew member and will be coming home on Discovery, kept turning off his microphone as he was overcome with emotion as he thanked the "folks on the ground" - flight-control engineering and training teams in Houston, Huntsville and Moscow. "I say thank you," he said, his voice breaking. "You are indeed the best and the brightest that our world has to offer."
Over the communications loop, there was loud applause from the "folks on the ground."
Mr. Anderson then played the song "Reunion," by Collective Soul. His crewmates swayed to the music (which in zero gravity has to be seen to be believed) as it played, tinny over the orbit-to-ground transmission:
Change will come
Change is here
Love fades out
Then love appears
Now my water's turned to wine
And these thoughts I have
I now claim as mine
I'm coming home
Change has been
Change will be
Time will tell
Then time will ease
Now my curtain has been drawn
And my heart can go
Where my heart does belong
I'm going home
Discovery's commander for this mission, Pamela A. Melroy, also teared up as she thanked the the station commander, Peggy A. Whitson, and the Russian cosmonaut on board the station, Yuri Malenchenko, and said goodbye to crew member Daniel M. Tani, who will stay aboard the station. "We promise we'll send somebody to come pick you up and bring you home," she joked.
"We're family now," she said.
Mr. Tani wiped his eyes repeatedly as well.
Col. Malenchenko made headlines in 2003 during his last stint aboard the station, when he got married from orbit: his bride, Ekaterina Dmitriev, was on earth in the Villa Capri restaurant near the Johnson Space Center. A justice of the peace did the honors; Col. Malenchenko wore a bowtie with his flight suit and was represented on the ground by a paper cut-out.
One can only wonder what the stoic Col. Malenchenko thought of the waterworks from his American crewmates, but when it came time to say goodbye, he gave Mr. Anderson what looked like a real rib-crusher of a hug.
Anyone who wants to see the emotional session can tune in to NASA television, where the farewell ceremonies are replayed as part of the highlights reel that runs on the hour.

Technorati : harmony, space station, space station repair

Space Station's Damaged Panel Is Fixed

Astronauts patched a damaged solar panel on the international space station yesterday during a tricky and dangerous seven-hour spacewalk.

Perched on the tip of an extension of the station's long robotic arm, astronaut Scott E. Parazynski snipped off tangles of broken and frayed wires that had ripped open two spots on the huge solar array, and installed five jury-rigged straps to reinforce the damaged area, allowing the panel to finally unfurl fully.

In this image provided by NASA television astronaut Scott Parazynski, top, gets into the foot restraints with the assistance of astronaut Douglas Wheelock at the end of the 90-foot robotic arm and boom extension, center, which will carry Parazynski for a 45-minute ride to the damage site at the start of the space walk to repair the damaged solar array Saturday Nov. 3, 2007.

"Excellent work, guys, excellent," space station commander Peggy A. Whitson said after the tense, painstaking job was finally done.

The spacewalk was considered particularly risky, with Parazynski venturing farther from the safety of the station than ever before. The repairs were unusually complicated because the astronauts were unable to fully assess the damage before getting close to the array and had to hope that their quickly improvised repair plans would work. Normally, such a repair mission would take weeks or even months of preparation and rehearsal.

But without the repairs, the damaged solar wing could have become structurally unstable, posing a hazard to the outpost and requiring that it be jettisoned.

Without the panel, the station would not have enough power to continue expanding. That could have forced a postponement of the installation of the next component, a European laboratory, next month. NASA is under pressure to complete the construction of the station before it retires the aging space shuttle fleet in 2010.

So, wearing protective spacesuits, Parazynski and astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock ventured out of the station, orbiting about 213 miles above the East Coast, just past 6 a.m. to begin the unprecedented job.

"Go out there and fix that thing for us," Whitson radioed just before the pair left the safety of the station's airlock.

With Wheelock positioned at the base of the solar array, Parazynski anchored his feet to the end of a 50-foot boom from the space shuttle; the boom was grasped in the middle by the station's 58-foot robotic arm. The arm carried him on a slow-motion, 45-minute trip half a football field away to just barely reach the damaged panel.

Dramatic live-television images showed Parazynski atop the extended arm with the bright orange solar array behind him and the brilliant blue and white Earth below.

Once there, Parazynski, an emergency-room physician, assessed the full extent of the damage for the first time, describing a daunting "hairball" of tangled wires in the area that was mangled when the solar panel was deployed Tuesday. The panel suffered two tears; the largest was about 2 1/2 feet long.

All the tools and all the metal parts of Parazynski's spacesuit were wrapped with insulating tape to minimize the risk of the astronaut getting shocked by the electric array, which is generating 160 volts. His bulky gloves were also covered with extra mittens for added protection.

Using an L-shaped device, dubbed a "hockey stick," to periodically and gently nudge the array away, as well as needle-nose pliers, vice-grips and clippers to cut away and secure loose wires, Parazynski methodically completed the repair, radioing his colleagues each step of the way.

Parazynski, one of the most experienced spacewalkers, installed five "cuff links," which the astronauts had pieced together from spare parts aboard the station. The three- to five-foot long pieces are insulated cables with aluminum plates at each end that Parazynski slipped into holes in the array like cuff links into a shirt sleeve. They are designed to support the damaged area and prevent further tearing.

Once all five were installed, Parazynski and Wheelock watched closely as ground controllers slowly unfurled the solar panel to its full 110-foot length. Parazynski then rode the robotic arm back to safety, returning inside the station with Wheelock at 1:22 p.m.

"It certainly was a really good day overall," said Dina Contella, lead spacewalk officer, during a briefing afterward.

The torn array, however, is just one of the problems facing the station. Metal shavings were discovered earlier in a joint on the station, jamming control of the solar arrays on that side. Space station managers are trying to determine how to fix that malfunction.

Technorati : repair, space, station

Spacewalk delays to fix broken solar wing

(24hoursnews) Astronauts are gearing up for a tricky solar wing repair at a far end of the International Space Station (ISS) tomorrow.

Crewmembers scrounged around the orbital laboratory yesterday for supplies, crafting "cuff links" with them that will button up two rips in the solar array wing. Today, mission controllers here at Johnson Space Center (JSC) sent astronauts on another scavenger hunt to find tools for repairing the power-generating blanket.

The space station now confronts two major threats to its power supply, both of which arose during the STS-120 mission. In addition to the maimed solar wing, which generates electricity but is structurally unstable, spacewalker Dan Tani discovered unusual metallic grit in solar-array-orienting gears on Oct. 28.

Since the solar array tore during its deployment on Oct. 30, however, mission managers abandoned inspecting the gears and scrambled to make the solar wing fix a top priority.

"We've had at least three or four extra teams running throughout the shifts," said Heather Rarick, ISS flight director, of the efforts to finish detailed plans for tomorrow's spacewalk. "It's just been a fantastic effort."

Astronauts took the changes in stride as well, offering up their sparse free time to outfit the space station's newest room as well as create the solar wing-saving cufflinks. Today, cremembers prepared Parazynski's 90-foot (27.4-meter) ride on an extended robotic arm to the damaged solar wing.

"We know and understand how hard you guys are working down there," spacewalker Doug Wheelock told mission controllers last night. "We're ready to execute."

Wheelock will accompany Parazynski during the fourth and now final spacewalk of the mission. A fifth spacewalk was planned for Sunday, but mission managers cancelled the operation to focus on hashing out plans to repair the 4B solar wing, which is attached to the Port 6 truss section of the space station.

NASA awoke the 10 free-floating astronauts this morning to the song "World" by Five for Fighting. "We're looking forward to another great day working with you and building the space station," Wheelock said as he awoke, dedicating the tune to hard-working crews on the ground.

Discovery and its seven-astronaut crew are slated to leave the orbital laboratory on Nov. 5 and land at Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 7, weather permitting. NASA officials said that the crew has enough supplies to stay docked for the ISS for two more days, should the need arise.

Technorati : NASA, news, spacewalk

Space Station Has Power System Damage

This image provided by NASA television shows the hatch opened on the Quest airlock and astronaut Scott Parazynski waiting to exit on the second space walk of the mission early Sunday Oct. 28, 2007. (AP Photo/NASA

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Two spacewalking astronauts unhooked a 35,000-pound girder from the international space station Sunday, starting the delicate process of moving the giant solar power tower to another part of the orbiting outpost.

Spacewalkers Scott Parazynski and Daniel Tani started their 6 1/2-hour jaunt by disconnecting cables and unscrewing bolts that connected the girder to the space station's backbone.

Spacewalking astronauts found evidence of damage to a key part of the International Space Station's power system today.

It was the second of five scheduled spacewalks during the shuttle mission. More than six hours of outdoor activities were originally to be devoted to unbuckling an solar array atop the International Space Station so it could be moved to the side of the station, and also doing some work on the new "Harmony" module that astronauts had installed earlier in the week and first entered on Saturday.

Those tasks proceeded well, as has virtually everything else in this otherwise exceptionally smooth mission. But those successes could well be overshadowed by the discovery of iron shavings in one of the shuttle's enormous rotating joint assemblies.

The part, known as the Solar Array Rotating Joint, or SARJ, is 10 feet across and one sits toward each end of the station's long truss. The motorized joint allows solar panels to rotate and constantly face the sun during the sunny part of each orbit.

"It's quite clear," said Daniel Tani, one of the two spacewalkers, describing what he saw after removing a protective cover over a motor. "There's metal-to-metal scraping, or something, and it's widespread."

A sharp-eyed space station flight controller had recently noticed that the joint on the right side of the station was experiencing unusual vibrations as it rotated. Further examination revealed that the motor on that joint was using greater-than-expected amounts of current, which suggested that it was having to work harder than it should to turn the paddlewheel-like array. Mission managers added the inspection to the spacewalk schedule on Friday.

The shavings suggest that moving parts may be misaligned and grinding against each other, or perhaps that a piece of debris from the ground or from space may have gotten into the works. Mission managers had hoped the problem with the rotary joint would be easy to spot and easy to fix - something like a bolt out of place or an insulating blanket that was dragging and increasing friction, or even a leftover shop rag that was carried up to space and became lodged in the wrong place but could be removed. Before taking the cover off, Mr. Tani conducted a visual inspection of every bolt and blanket on the exterior of the device, which was made by Lockheed Martin at its Space Systems facility in Sunnyvale, and found no problems.

The problem could have ripple effects that go beyond this mission. If NASA wants a second look at the joint, a second spacewalk will have to be added to the schedule. With five spacewalks already on the shuttle mission's calendar, it would be difficult to squeeze in another. At the same time, the days between the end of this shuttle mission and the arrival of the next shuttle in December is packed with activities for the three-person space station crew, and so even a single additional spacewalk could mean delaying the December mission.

Kirk Shireman, the deputy space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, noted said in a media briefing on Friday that there are backup motors and controllers for each rotary joint, and so the system might still be able to work after a switchover.

During the same briefing, Derek Hassman, the lead space station flight director, said that the troubled joint could be "parked" in a position that allows it to pick up a fair amount of sunlight throughout the orbit while NASA continues to investigate the problem. "As long as we can get it into an attitude that's reasonably good for power generation, combined with what the other SARJ can produce, we wouldn't have any significant power impacts that we couldn't deal with," he said.

Technorati : Space Station, nasa, news