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Updating extended solar array troubleshooting BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: December 13, 2006 Continuing running notes... A few minutes before 6 p.m., astronaut Stephen Robinson radiod up a revised "big picture" plan, telling the astronauts to re-extend the mast as far as necessary to clear the folding and tension problems and then to retract in stop-and-start fashion one bay at a time. The mast was re-extended to about 28 bays "and we're ready to retract," astronaut Sunita Williams radioed at 6:02 p.m. "We're going to retract one bay at a time. We're retracting... ready, ready, now." After one bay, she stopped the motion. Then restarted and stopped again. And again, one blanket slat folded the wrong way. The mast was re-extended to get the fold out and then retracted one bay. That went well, and Williams was cleared to retract two bays at a time after reaching the 23-bay mark without any problems. Williams then took the mast in to 17-and-a-half bays without any apparent problems and, at 6:24 p.m., continued the retraction. But at 16-and-a-half bays, movement was halted again when the slats at the base of one blanket appeared to be starting to fold the wrong way. Williams then re-extended the mast about one bay to clear the fold problem and then proceeded to retract one bay at a time. The fold reappeared. The mast was extended then retracted a half bay at 6:37 p.m., more than five hours after the retraction work began. Again, the panel in question began folding over the wrong way. "We may be converging on a therory here," Lopez-Alegria said. "It looks like the fold between the panels, I don't know the nomenclature, the tabs are called A24 and A25, the fold between those two panels seems more reluctant than the others and that's the one that is apt to fold sort of onto the accordian pile there where we're getting hung up." "Copy, Mike, thanks for the data. That'll help us," said astronaut Stephen Robinson in mission control. As a test, the mast was retracted another half bay, to about 16-and-a-half bays, but the astronauts reported the folding slats in question were spilling off to one side. It was the 44th stop or start command issued since the work began earlier in the day. As Discovery and the station moved back into Earth's shadow, lead station flight director John Curry, deputy space station program manager Kirk Shireman and other top managers huddled near Curry's console in mission control to debate their options.
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