Marcia Dunn
Cape Canaveral, Fla. — Associated Press Last updated on Wednesday, Sep. 02, 2009 02:37AM EDT
A pair of spacewalkers successfully tackled a hefty tank removal job at the international space station Tuesday as their crewmates unloaded comedian Stephen Colbert's namesake treadmill for all “those famously fat astronauts.”
The only concern Nicole Stott and Danny Olivas had about mass — everything is weightless up there, after all — involved the huge ammonia tank they needed to disconnect. They held the freed 600-kilogram tank steady until a robot arm grabbed it.
A new fully loaded tank will be installed on the second spacewalk of the mission Thursday night. The old one will be returned to Earth aboard Discovery.
The tanks are massive by spacewalking standards: Nearly 1.5-metres long, 2.1-metres wide and 1.2-metres high. The old one has been up there since 2002.
A moment of concern arose 1 1/2 hours into Tuesday evening's spacewalk when Mr. Olivas noticed fraying on the index finger of his right glove, following the tank removal. Mission Control evaluated the problem for several minutes before giving him a “go” to remain outside. The stitching defect was deemed minor; deeper damage likely would have forced an early end to the spacewalk.
Minutes later, Ms. Stott reported a high reading of her carbon dioxide levels. When asked if she felt any symptoms, she replied, “No. Nothing.” Mission Control said it appeared to be “a weird sensor” and that her suit was operating fine.
Then there was a half-hour communication outage between Mission Control and the shuttle-station complex. A thunderstorm at a satellite relay station in Guam was to blame.
“You're going to be on your own here,” Mission Control told the 13 space fliers before contact was lost. The spacewalkers' work to retrieve some science experiments was rearranged because of the outage.
Everything went smoothly after that, and the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk ended early Wednesday with all objectives accomplished. “Good day's work,” Mr. Olivas said.
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