HOUSTON – Atlantis astronauts completed the second of two high-priority tasks today, installing the final two 375-pound batteries of the six the shuttle brought to the International Space Station. Their 6-hour, 46-minute spacewalk wrapped up at 12:13 p.m. CDT.
Spacewalkers Mike Good and Garrett Reisman also installed an ammonia jumper and brought a power and data grapple fixture from Atlantis’ cargo bay into the station. Those tasks were added to the spacewalk after Good and Mission Specialist Steve Bowen were able to replace four batteries, one more than planned, during their Wednesday spacewalk.
The other high-priority task, installation of the Russian Mini-Research Module 1 named Rassvet was accomplished Tuesday. Hatches between it and the Zarya module were opened on Thursday. Today, after fans and filters were used overnight, station crew members reported a significant decrease in the amount of the metal shavings they had seen Thursday.
The first spacewalk task was installation of a backup ammonia coolant jumper between the Port 4 and Port 5 truss segments. It provides a readily available path for an ammonia recharge should one become necessary.
The spacewalkers moved farther out the port truss to turn their attention to the batteries. They removed and replaced the fifth and sixth old batteries and returned each to the nearby cargo carrier at the end of the station arm. Finally they took the last battery removed Wednesday from its temporary stowage position on the truss and moved it to the cargo carrier.
The station arm moved the cargo carrier with the old batteries to a temporary stowage position, to await its return to Atlantis’ cargo bay on Saturday. The batteries, on the Port 6 truss, store power from the station’s solar arrays for use during the 16 nights the station experiences each 24 hours.
Good and Reisman moved to the cargo bay where they removed the grapple fixture. Once it was free, both spacewalkers moved with it back to the airlock where it was stowed. It will provide a base for the station’s Canadarm2 on the Zarya module, where it is to be installed during a spacewalk scheduled for July.
From there the two moved into a get-ahead task, stowing and retrieving tools at Z1 truss tool boxes – basically a cleanup task after previous spacewalks. That was the final job before they moved back to the airlock to end the spacewalk.
As during the first two spacewalks, Atlantis Pilot Tony Antonelli was the intravehicular officer, choreographing activities. Mission Specialist Piers Sellers and station Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson operated Canadarm2. Bowen, who participated in the Monday and Wednesday spacewalks, worked on photo and TV coverage.
Today’s spacewalk, the fourth for Good and the third for Reisman, was the 146th for station assembly and maintenance. Those spacewalks total 914 hours, 53 minutes.
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