Flight Engineers Suni Williams and Aki Hoshide began their second
spacewalk in less than a week at 7:06 a.m. EDT today. They are working
to complete the installation of a Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) that
was hampered last week by a possible misalignment and damaged bolt
threads.
Williams and Hoshide built some improvised tools to
assist with their installation tasks. The tools will be used to clean
the bolts and receptacles and repair the bolt threads.
If the astronauts are unable to install the MBSU, an option exists to
return it to the airlock for further analysis and troubleshooting.
Flight Engineer Joe Acaba is the Canadarm2 operator and will monitor
the spacewalkers from inside the International Space Station. Hoshide
will ride the Canadarm2 attached to a portable foot restraint to the
MBSU worksite.
Today’s spacewalk is scheduled to last 6.5 hours
and includes other tasks postponed from last week’s excursion if the
MBSU installation task is completed on time.
Last week’s spacewalk lasted eight hours and 17 minutes making it the
third longest in U.S. spaceflight history. It was originally scheduled
for 6.5 hours before mission controllers and the astronauts struggled to
install the MBSU.
Today’s spacewalk is the third for Expedition 32. Commander Gennady
Padalka and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko completed a five-hour,
51-minute excursion on Aug. 20. They worked to move a Strela-2 cargo
boom which allows the Pirs docking compartment to be undocked at a later
date.
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SOURCE: NASA
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