|
| |
| Smith crawls out into the cargo bay | |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Two astronauts went back out on another spacewalk Wednesday to test a crane and a roving, robotic eye for use on the future international space station.
Space shuttle Columbia crewmen Winston Scott and Takao Doi popped open the hatch a little after 4 a.m., an hour later than planned. Mission Control simply gave the astronauts extra time to get ready for the spacewalk, their second of the mission.
NASA hopes the robotic eye, called Aercam Sprint, will reduce the amount of spacewalks required once the international space station is up and running.
| |
| It is hoped that AerCam Sprint, the robotic camera, will make it easier to spot trouble on the future international space station | |
Scott and Doi never got around to Aercam Sprint during their first spacewalk on November 24. They were too busy capturing a runaway science satellite and, in the time that was left, testing a prototype of a crane that will fly on the international space station.
Because Scott had trouble mounting a large box to the end of the 17 1/2-foot crane last week, NASA asked him to give it another try, this time with a smaller load. Once that was finished, he planned to toss out Aercam Sprint for a 30-minute test flight.
Padded for safety, the 35-pound sphere -- which looks like a soccer ball but is closer in size to a beach ball -- was to flit around the open cargo bay, its TV camera peering at the spacewalkers and their tools. The remote-control operator, shuttle pilot Steven Lindsey, planned to fly it at a harmless 3 inches per second.
| |
| Doi (L) and Scott deploy the crane | |
"There is some real tangible benefit of having a little robotic camera that can fly and look over your shoulder wherever you are," said Gregory Harbaugh, acting chief of NASA's spacewalk projects.
NASA hopes to fly a more advanced model on the international space station to inspect hard-to-reach areas outside. Designers envision a smarter, self-sufficient Aercam Sprint that could detect heat and chemical leaks, and even sense obstacles in its path and automatically steer around them.
It would be a boon for space station crews, allowing them to spend more time inside doing science work.
| |
| Before the spacewalk, the troublesome Spartan satellite -- attached to the shuttle's cargo arm this time -- took measurements | |
As it is, NASA expects U.S. astronauts to conduct more than 1,150 hours of spacewalks to assemble and maintain the international space station over a five-year period beginning next summer. Russian cosmonauts will perform half that amount for a combined total of 1,700-plus hours of spacewalks.
The expected outcome: a whopping 1 million pounds of linked modules, beams and solar wings, stretching 290 feet long and 360 feet wide.
"It is a gigantic undertaking, something like three times the amount of (spacewalk) work that we've ever done in the history of the American space program," Harbaugh said Monday.
And that doesn't count all the spacewalks that will be needed to keep the station running for 10 years, once it's completed in 2003.
That's why NASA on Monday approved a second spacewalk for Columbia's crew. It's the last U.S. spacewalk before astronauts start hauling up station parts next July, one month after the Russians launch the first piece.
"This is our last chance," Harbaugh said.