Washington, April 09: Two astronauts from the shuttle Discovery began a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk Friday, working on an ammonia tank on the outside of the International Space Station, NASA said.
Mission specialists Clayton Anderson and Rick Mastracchio left the shuttle’s airlock today for the first of three space walks during the 13-day mission to resupply the space station.
Mastracchio, the lead spacewalker, was seen in images beamed to Earth working on an ammonia tank on the outside of the space station, which will be replaced with a new tank.
The ammonia is used in the space station’s cooling system.
They will also retrieve a science experiment from a Japanese laboratory facility on the station’s porch.
The Discovery, which blasted off from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday, docked on Thursday with the International Space Station.
Eight tons of supplies, gear and racks of science experiments were transferred from the shuttle to the space station in an Italian-made module known as Leonardo.
Besides the replacement ammonia tank, the gear included a freezer to preserve samples of blood, urine, saliva, plants or microbes used in micro-gravity experiments for later analysis back on Earth.
—Agencies