Spacewalker Scott Parazynski opened up a second solar array rotary joint today, peered inside and told ground controllers he saw no signs of any internal contamination like the metal shavings fellow spacewalker Dan Tani discovered in the space station's right-side rotary joint during a spacewalk Sunday.

"it's like Easter. You open up an egg for a surprise," Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli said as Parazynski was removing a thermal cover on the left-side solar alpha rotary joint, or SARJ.

"Yes, well again, I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I have a happy story, at least so far, that I don't see filings or debris," Parazynski said. "The races look nice and clean. Let's see what else is underneath here... "

He then stowed the thermal cover and took a closer look.

"See if you see anything out of the ordinary, anything (like) Dan described," Nespoli asked.

"The race rings themselves look like they're brand new machined, no wear on any of the teeth," Parazynski said of the 10-foot-wide motor-driven gear and the race rings used by big bearings in the joint. "Looking at the race rings themselves, very, very smooth and no particulate matter there, no galling."

After Parazynski had looked about a bit, Nespoli asked him for additional confirmation.

"And Scott, from what you are describing, what I see on your wireless (helmet camera), I don't see absolutely any sign of any damage, anything."

Parazynski examined the underside of the thermal blanket he removed earlier to make sure aluminum insulation was still in place.

"The other side is pristine, right out of the shop," he reported. "No debris whatsoever."

And with that, he repositioned the thermal blanket and moved on to a few final tasks while fellow spacewalker Doug Wheelock worked to move a 525-pound electrical switching unit from Discovery to an external storage platform near the station's main airlock.

Two massive SARJ joints, one on each side of the station's power truss, are in place to rotate outboard solar arrays to keep them face on to the sun as the station orbits the Earth. Engineers began noticing higher-than-normal vibration and power usage in the starboard SARJ just under two months ago and Tani was asked to carry out a quick inspection during the crew's second spacewalk Sunday.

After removing a thermal blanket, he was surprised to discover large amounts of metallic contamination inside the joint. NASA managers asked Parazynski to look inside the port SARJ today to serve as a baseline for comparison. The port SARJ has operated flawlessly, with no signs of vibration or abnormal power use.

Based on Parazynski's observations today, internal contamination is not at all normal and the shavings Tani discovered are a clear sign something is amiss in the starboard SARJ. A more-thorough inspection of the now-parked starboard SARJ will be carried out during a spacewalk Thursday.

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