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Station spacewalk expected to slip to Wednesday BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: June 28, 2004 A critical space station repair spacewalk that was aborted last week due to a spacesuit problem is expected to slip from Tuesday to Wednesday night, officials said today. The schedule shift, if approved Tuesday by NASA's mission management team, means the spacewalk would be underway at the same time NASA's $3.3 billion Cassini probe is braking into orbit around Saturn. Pending final approval, station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Mike Fincke plan to open the Pirs airlock module's hatch around 5:40 p.m. Wednesday to officially begin a planned six-hour excursion. Four hours later and 930 million miles away, Cassini's main engine will fire up for a make-or-break 96-minute burn to put the craft in orbit around Saturn. The scheduling conflict has forced NASA to scramble a bit to ensure both events can be televised live. A NASA producer said today if the revised schedule holds up, Cassini commentary, the braking maneuver and a post-orbit-insertion news conference would be carried live on NASA's normal satellite television channel, the one carried by many cable television companies: AMC 9, transponder 9. The spacewalk would be carried on AMC 9, transponder 5. The goal of the EVA is to replace a circuit breaker that failed April 21, shutting down control moment gyroscope No. 2, one of four gyros used to stabilize and re-orient the station. With CMG-1 already out of action due to an earlier problem, station managers want to get CMG-2 spun up and back on line as soon as possible to provide redundancy in case of additional failures down the road. Wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits, Padalka and Fincke began a repair spacewalk last Thursday, but they were forced to call it off after just 14 minutes when Russian engineers noticed a pressure drop in Fincke's primary oxygen tank. After troubleshooting, engineers concluded the problem likely was caused by a small handle Fincke repositioned as part of a standard pre-spacewalk procedure to test the suit's ability to deliver increased oxygen flow if required. When he reset the handle, a light indicated the oxygen flow was back at the normal level. But the switch apparently hung up slightly and oxygen continued flowing out of the primary tank at a higher-than-normal rate. Russian flight controllers believe the suit is in good health and new procedures have been developed to help the spacewalkers confirm the proper oxygen setting.
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International Space Station officials preview the upcoming Expedition 9 spacewalk to replace a faulty power control box that supports one of the U.S. control moment gyros. (66min 08sec file)
The Expedition 9 crew describes their upcoming spacewalk in Russian spacesuits, life aboard the space station and the view of Earth in this interview with Bill Harwood of CBS News. (20min 19sec file)
The Soyuz TMA-4 spacecraft carrying the Expedition 9 crew docks to the space station's Zarya control module as seen by a video camera on the capsule. (4min 40sec file)
The elbow camera on the space station's robotic arm provides this view of the Soyuz capsule's docking to the Zarya module. (2min 45sec file)
The next space station crew is safely launched aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome. (3min 32sec file)