| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
WASHINGTON: NASA on Wednesday ordered spacewalking astronauts back into the International Space Station ahead of schedule after a spacesuit was found to be working improperly.
Mission Control in Houston, Texas cut the spacewalk short by about 30 minutes, for a total of five hours and 59 minutes, after higher than normal carbon dioxide levels were found in astronaut Chris Cassidy's spacesuit due to a problem with its lithium hydroxide canister, the US space agency said.
But NASA stressed that "there is no imminent danger and there is plenty of time for the spacewalkers to complete cleanup tasks before returning to the airlock."
Cassidy and fellow astronaut Dave Wolf ended the third of five spacewalks for the space shuttle Endeavour crew at 2031 GMT. The pair removed multi-layered insulation from the Japanese Kibo science laboratory and prepared payloads for their transfer to Kibo's new Exposed Facility on Thursday.
But due to the spacesuit malfunction, they only replaced two of the six original batteries on the ISS's photovoltaic power system. NASA said the remaining batteries - only four need to be changed - would be replaced on a future spacewalk.
Each ISS battery measures 101 centimetres by 90 centimetres by 45 centimetres, weighs 170 kilogrammes and is designed to last 6.5 years.
The Japanese Exposed Facility is a 1.9-tonne platform-like structure that was attached on Saturday to one of Kibo's two pressurised modules and is designed to service experiments that require direct exposure to the vacuum of space.
Endeavour took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 15 for a 16-day mission with a crew of six Americans and one Canadian to help complete construction of the ISS.
On the second Endeavour spacewalk on Sunday, astronauts moved equipment from Endeavour onto the ISS and repaired a malfunctioning toilet on the orbiting station.
During a first spacewalk on Saturday, astronauts completed construction of the Kibo lab during an outing that lasted five and a half hours.
The ISS should be completed in 2010, which also is the target date for the retirement of the US fleet of three space shuttles.
Endeavour is expected to land back on Earth on July 31. The launch of the next shuttle, Discovery, to the ISS is planned for August 18 at 4:25 am (0825 GMT). - AFP/de
|
