Astronauts hit several obstacles in their mission

May 18, 2010 06:54 GMT  ·  By
Garrett Reisman and Stephen Bowen, both STS-132 mission specialists, step out of the ISS Quest airlock at the beginning of their first spacewalk
   Garrett Reisman and Stephen Bowen, both STS-132 mission specialists, step out of the ISS Quest airlock at the beginning of their first spacewalk

Yesterday, May 17, NASA astronauts Garrett Reisman and Stephen Bowen, both of whom came to orbit aboard space shuttle Atlantis, conducted the first spaceflight of the STS-132 mission. The two were in charge of installing a new communications antenna on the outer hull of the International Space Station (ISS), and also had other chores. Their sortie was initially planned to last for about six and a half hours, but eventually delays caused it to extend for more than 7 and a half hours, Space reports.

Reisman and Bowen stepped out of the Quest airlock at around midday (GMT), but their extra-vehicular activity (EVA) only concluded 7 hours and 25 minutes later, at 3:19 pm EDT (1919 GMT). “[We] ran into some snags along the way. I think we got through all of those and had a highly successful day,” said in a briefing on Monday Emily Nelson, who is the lead ISS flight director at NASA. The two astronauts had to try and untangle a tangled power cable, that on Saturday hindered their attempt to conduct the mandatory heat shield inspection as Atlantis was racing to catch up with the ISS. In addition, they also had to install a spare parts platform on Dextre, the two-armed robotic Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator robot.

The spacewalk was also made difficult by the fact that a short power outage occurred at one point, which affected two video cameras. These were installed on the station's robotic arm, and they were both vital for the mission. The glitch was caused by errors in the power unit aboard one of the three ISS command and control computers. The situation was quickly resolved however, and the two spacewalkers got on with their job. “At that point it wasn't a big problem because we had gotten a little bit ahead because the crew was doing so well,” explained the lead spacewalk officer, Lisa Shore.

“We've had a few glitches here and there but they're not significant in the grand scheme of the things we're trying to accomplish,” added the co-chair of the STS-132 mission management team, said LeRoy Cain. Astronauts are currently gearing up for a new spacewalk, which will see the Russian-built Rassvet module (the Mini Research Module-1, or MRM-1), being installed on the ISS. The new room will function as a cargo storage area, and will also double as a docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress capsules. Atlantis' 12-day mission is scheduled to be the last, with the orbiter planned for retirement after it returns to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida.