Expedition 14 Crew Completes 3rd Spacewalk
With all scheduled tasks accomplished, Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Suni Williams finished a 6-hour, 40-minute spacewalk Thursday. Their completed tasks will allow for the attachment of a cargo platform during the STS-118 mission this summer and relocation of the P6 truss during STS-120 later this year.
Connection of remaining cables to the Destiny laboratory will allow future visiting shuttles to derive power from the station to extend their missions.
The crew now begins to review Russian procedures for the next spacewalk on Feb. 22. Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin will work on an antenna on the Progress 23 cargo ship docked at the aft port of the Zvezda service module. The antenna did not properly retract when that spacecraft docked in October. They will try to secure or remove the antenna to avoid any interference when the Progress 23 undocks in April. The spacewalk will be the 10th for Lopez-Alegria, a new record for a U.S. astronaut.
The three spacewalks from the Quest airlock in U.S. spacesuits and a Russian spacewalk on Feb. 22 will be the most ever done by station crew members during such a short period and will mark five spacewalks in all for Expedition 14, a record for any expedition.
Source: NASA