NASA STS-134 Report #17 1:30 p.m. CDT Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas
HOUSTON – Preparations for the mission’s third spacewalk, station maintenance and repairs kept Endeavour crew members busy much of Tuesday.
The spacewalk, by Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel and Mike Fincke, is scheduled to begin at 12:46 a.m. CDT Wednesday. Scheduled tasks include installation of a power and data grapple fixture on the Zarya module to serve as another base for the station’s Canadarm2.
They’ll also install power jumper cables to bring power to Zarya from the U.S. segment of the station and install a video signal converter on Zarya. They plan to complete installation of cables for the external wireless communications system, a task postponed from the mission’s first spacewalk on Friday.
Tuesday the two spacewalkers and Greg Chamitoff, their intravehicular officer, configured spacewalk tools. Late in their day, all crew members gathered for a review of spacewalk procedures.
A new twist to this outing will be use of the in-suit light exercise protocol to help purge nitrogen from the blood of the spacewalkers. It consists of raising legs and arms while suited up for about 50 minutes, surrounded by a total of 50 minutes of rest in the suits. It avoids the overnight campout procedure and saves oxygen.
Shortly after wakeup, Fincke, with help from station Flight Engineer Ron Garan, replaced a remote power controller module, essentially a circuit breaker box that allows transfer of files to the ground. Some experiment data was affected, but many of those experiments can store data for later transmission.
Meanwhile Endeavour Commander Mark Kelly worked to replace a desiccant bed in a station carbon dioxide removal assembly. Later in the work day, Fincke and Chamitoff worked to replace an element of an oxygen generation system.
Endeavour astronauts also got a couple of hours of off-duty time.
Just before midnight, Pilot Greg Johnson and Chamitoff talked with media representatives from two San Francisco stations, KPIX-TV and KGO-TV, and Sacramento’s KFBK Radio. At about 5:45 a.m. Kelly, Fincke and Chamitoff fielded questions from The Daily, NewsRadio 1020 KDHA in Pittsburgh, Houston’s KTRK-TV and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The next status report will be issued after crew wakeup or earlier if warranted.
