Cape Canaveral, September 02: A pair of spacewalkers successfully tackled a hefty tank removal job at the international space station on 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 600kg tank steady until a robot arm grabbed it.
A new fully loaded tank will be installed on the second spacewalk of the mission on Thursday night. The old one will be returned to Earth aboard Discovery.
The tanks are massive by spacewalking standards: Nearly 1.5m long, 2.1m wide and 1.2m 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 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.
Communication outage
Minutes later, 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 on Wednesday with all objectives accomplished. “Good day’s work,” Olivas said.
Shortly before the spacewalk got under way, the space station officially got its new $5m treadmill that is named for Colbert. It was one of the first items to be unloaded from the moving van that was delivered by Discovery.
—Agencies