Space Station cosmonauts spacewalking to install “Christmas tree” protective panels

William Atkins
Thursday, 31 May 2007 05:22

Science - Space

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The May 30th spacewalk is being shown live on NASA TV.

The hatch on the Russian Pirs docking compartment was opened at 3:05 p.m. EDT., about 45 minutes later than scheduled. A few problems occurred in the preparations for the spacewalk. U.S. flight engineer Sunita Williams, who is not one of the spacewalkers, worked on some of these problems. She is advising and helping with the activities of her two fellow space travelers. She is officially called the intravehicular officer for the event.

Yuchikhin will be wearing a Russian Orlan spacesuit with red stripes (designated EV1) and Kotov will wear the same type of Russian suit but with blue stripes (designated EV2).

Seventeen aluminum protective panels were left outside of the Space Station in an adaptive assembly nicknamed the “Christmas tree”. They are officially called the Service Module Debris Protection (SMDP) panels. The SMDP panels will be installed on the Zvezda Service Module (ZSM).

The panels are about 2 feet by 3 feet in dimensions and weight (on Earth) about 20 pounds. They will help protect the ISS from small- and medium-sized space debris, such as natural occurring micro-meteoroids and artificially made pieces from launch vehicles.

As of 5:22 p.m. CDT, the spacewalking cosmonauts have just repaired a GPS (global positioning system) navigation antenna that was broken. The GPS antenna will be used with the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), an unmanned cargo vehicle scheduled to arrive for its maiden visit to the International Space Station later in 2007.

During their spacewalks, the two cosmonauts will also place canisters containing biological experiments from the Earth outside the Space Station.

The future June 6th spacewalk, which begins at about 10:30 a.m., will also be shown live on NASA TV beginning at 10 a.m. EDT.