Joe Acaba & Tony work together yesterday on the Shuttle Robotic Arm to prepare the S6 Truss for installation today by fellow crewmates and spacewalkers, Ricky Arnold & Steve Swanson, and Station Robotic Arm operators, Koichi Wakata and John Phillips. _________________________________________________________
As posted on http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html ...
Spacewalk Complete at 7:23 p.m. EDT
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:31:57 PM CDT
Astronauts today installed the International Space Station's final truss segment, Starboard 6, containing the fourth pair of solar arrays. Once the solar array wings are unfurled, the segment will provide the final complement of power to the station.
After station robotic arm drivers John Phillips and Koichi Wakata guided the truss into position, spacewalkers Steve Swanson and Richard Arnold connected bolts to permanently attach S6 to S5. The spacewalkers plugged in power and data connectors to the truss, prepared a radiator to cool it, opened boxes containing the new solar arrays and deployed the Beta Gimbal Assemblies containing masts that support the solar arrays. Mission Control in Houston deployed the radiator, and the stage is set for solar array wing deploy on Friday at 10:58 a.m. EDT.
Today's spacewalk lasted six hours, seven minutes. The EVA was Swanson's third spacewalk and Arnold's first, and the 121st spacewalk in support of station assembly, totaling about 762 hours.
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Really can't describe how much we loved the launch experience and the pride we felt watching the shuttle liftoff.
We watched the ISS/Shuttle zip by in the night sky Thursday night and then turned on NASA TV and saw pictures of Tony and gang -- too cool!
Karen, Rick, David
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