Mission Status Center

Space shuttle Atlantis crew members Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik completed a six-hour spacewalk Saturday that installed an experimental communications antenna package and wireless video relay, moved a measurement probe, deployed two external payload attachment fixtures for future use, plus a few other odds and ends. One final EVA of the mission is planned for Monday.

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EVA ENDS. Repressurization of the Quest airlock module began at 3:39 p.m. EST, marking the official end of today's spacewalk by Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik. The EVA lasted six hours and 8 minutes.

This was the second of three spacewalks planned for Atlantis' mission to the space station. The total time accumulated by the two EVAs amounts to 12 hours and 45 minutes.

Bresnik and Bobby Satcher will perform the final spacewalk on Monday.

The airlock's outer hatch has been closed and locked.

Spacewalkers are making their way back to the airlock and bring this excursion to a successful conclusion.

A tool stanchion and foot platform are being configured by the crew at the junction between the U.S. and Russian segments of the space station.

A preliminary list of deorbit and landing opportunities for shuttle Atlantis are now posted here.

Five hours and counting in today's spacewalk.

Checking a connector on some communications cabling and relocating a tool stanchion are among the items the spacewalkers will work on next.

This latest fixture has been deployed. This is where the fourth ExPRESS Logistics Carrier will go on a later mission. The spacewalkers will move onward to other bonus and "get-ahead" tasks.

The spacewalkers are making quick work of this particular attach fitting. Earlier ones have been trouble for crews on several missions. The brace beam has been temporarily removed and the bracket rotated into position for installation.

Continuing to run well ahead of schedule and plenty of time left in the six-hour EVA, the spacewalkers are going to tackle deploying another payload attach system.

The new WETA has been installed on the Starboard 3 truss. The game plan had the spacewalkers attach the antenna to its stanchion, connect three umbilicals and remove the thermal covering.

Next up in the spacewalk is installation of a new wireless video system external transceiver assembly, or WETA. These devices are used to relay video from spacewalkers' helmet-mounted video camera.

The new attachment fixture to hold a future payload has been successfully set up on the space station's Starboard 3 truss. This is the site where the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, will go when it is delivered to the outpost during a space shuttle mission next summer.

Passing the three-hour mark into today's EVA. The crew is running about an hour ahead of their timeline.

Now out at the Starboard 3 truss, the spacewalkers are starting the steps to activating yet another of these fixtures along the station backbone where pallets and payloads can be attached.

Both astronauts have stopped at the airlock to top off their spacesuit oxygen supplies before proceeding to the next job of deploying an external payload attachment system.

The spacewalkers have completed the second major task of this EVA by relocating the Floating Potential Measurement Unit. They have gotten the FPMU secured and hooked up at its new home on the Port 1 truss of the International Space Station. The device probes the arcing hazard at the station posed by the giant solar arrays.

The Floating Potential Measurement Unit has been carried over to the space station's Port 1 truss where the spacewalkers have gotten the probe "soft docked" and are about to begin bolting it down.

The next activity for the spacewalk is getting underway now. The astronauts are going to relocate the Floating Potential Measurement Unit from the Starboard 1 truss to the Port 1 truss, clearing it out of the way for future robotic operations.

Installation of the GATOR experimental communications antenna package on the Columbus lab module of the International Space Station has been completed by the spacewalkers. This hardware aims to demonstrate two different types of automatic identification receivers used by the U.S. Coast Guard to get data about vessels. A Ham radio antenna is included in this assembly as well.

For this task, Bresnik is installing the two antennas to handrails on the exterior of Columbus while Foreman routes the power umbilicals and hooks up the cabling.

Now up at the International Space Station's Columbus laboratory module belonging to the European Space Agency, the astronauts are going to work installing this antenna package known as GATOR.

The astronauts are making their way to the payload bay of space shuttle Atlantis to retrieve equipment a toolbox needed in the spacewalk's first task to install an experimental communications antenna package on the station's Columbus module.

Both spacewalkers have emerged from the airlock. This is the fifth EVA for Foreman and the first for Bresnik.

EVA BEGINS. The spacewalkers switched their suits to internal battery power at 9:31 a.m. EST, marking the official start time for today's EVA by Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik. This is the second of three spacewalks planned during Atlantis' mission at the International Space Station.

The depressurization has been completed and the Quest airlock's outer hatch leading to space has been opened.

After pausing the depressurization at 5.0 psi for a planned leak check, the process has resumed.

The ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 2 has been successfully attached to the International Space Station, giving the outpost another stockpile of spare parts to be called upon when needed in the future years.

ELC 2 is a pallet-like structure loaded with a control moment gyroscope for orientation system, pump module for the active thermal control system, nitrogen tank assembly for pressurizing cooling lines, a container holding 10 spare circuit breakers, a high-pressure oxygen tank for the airlock module and trailing umbilical reel for station's mobile railcar. The carrier also has an empty slot for future payloads, plus an external science experiment called MISSE 7.

The ELC 1 pallet was moved from Atlantis' payload bay and installation onto the station's Port 3 truss Wednesday.

Airlock depressurization has begun.

The internal hatch on the airlock is being closed by Wilmore and Stott.

ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 2 has a mass of about 13,400 pounds and measures 16 by 14 feet. The station's robot arm is getting ELC 2 lined up with the attachment mechanism on the Starboard 3 truss.

All suited up and ready to venture outdoors, spacewalkers Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik have moved into the section of the airlock that will be depressurized in a little while. The EVA is expected to start around 9:30 a.m. EST.

Atlantis' arm has released its grasp on ELC 2 and backed away.

The space station's robotic arm has grappled the ELC 2, which was maneuvered into the handoff position by the shuttle arm. It will be the station's arm that does the work to install the pallet today.

Astronauts Michael Foreman and Randolph Bresnik, presumably still awaiting word on the birth of his second child, adopted a revised spacewalk preparation timeline Saturday after overnight false alarms interrupted their normal low-pressure sleep protocol.

Both astronauts were camping out in the space station's Quest airlock module at a reduced pressure of 10.2 pounds per square inch to help purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams before a planned spacewalk today.

But for a second night in a row, a false depressurization alarm, apparently triggered by an issue with a new Russian module, interrupted the preparation protocol and flight controllers told the astronauts they would instead exercise early today wearing oxygen masks to accomplish the required nitrogen purge.

The shuttle crew was allowed to sleep an extra half hour. As a result of the changes, the spacewalk now is expected to begin at 9:38 a.m. EST, about an hour and a half later than originally planned, and will last six hours instead of six-and-a-half.

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The latest version of the NASA Television schedule (Rev. G) can be downloaded here.

Atlantis' robotic arm is hoisting the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 2 out of the space shuttle's payload bay. The pallet was grappled by the arm yesterday and then released from retention latches in the bay this morning. The shuttle will hand the carrier to the space station's arm for installation on the truss backbone later today.

Spacewalk preparations are in full swing this morning. The astronauts are completing the revised prebreathe protocols in light of last night's false alarm situation. The six-hour EVA is slated to start around 9:30 a.m. EST, based on the new planning.

The astronauts have been awakened to begin Flight Day 6.

For the second night in a row, a false depressurization alarm woke the Atlantis astronauts and their space station colleagues Friday night, tripping two fire alarms and interrupting a low-pressure protocol being followed by crew members Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik for their spacewalk Saturday.

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There's been another false alarm aboard the space station. But this time the situation has impacted the spacewalking plans by interrupting the campout by Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik and their conditioning protocols to guard against getting "the bends" during tomorrow's EVA.

Since Houston expects it to take a couple hours to get back into a normal configuration with the environmental control system back going again, Foreman and Bresnik have been told to break out of the overnight camping in the slightly lowered pressure in the airlock.

The spacewalkers instead will have to do an exercise sequence in the morning while wearing masks to breathe pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from their systems.

The crew will be allowed to sleep in to 3:58 a.m. EST and likely shorten the duration of the spacewalk, Mission Control says.

The shuttle and station crews are asleep. They will be awakened at 3:28 a.m. EST to begin Flight Day 6 of Atlantis' mission.

Atlantis crewmates Mike Foreman and Randy Bresnik have begun the conditioning protocols in preparation for their spacewalk tomorrow. The duo is scheduled to start the EVA a little after 8 a.m. EST.

The space station's mobile railcar just completed a relocation down the tracks on truss backbone to move the robotic arm into position for tomorrow's installation of the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 2.

The astronauts just radioed Mission Control with news they have finished up all the work planned during this mission to reconfigure equipment, plus power, data and cooling lines inside the Unity connecting node to prepare for the Tranquility module's attachment in February on the next shuttle flight.

Tranquility, also known as Node 3, was supposed to be docked to the nadir port on Unity. But plans have changed and it will go on the port side instead. That meant the astronauts had to make internal changes to accommodate the new module.

Activities continue about the shuttle-station complex to transfer supplies, get ready for tomorrow's spacewalk and make some repairs. The crew just reported having successfully fixed an ultrasound device aboard the station used for science experiments and medical uses. Charlie Hobaugh and Nicole Stott replaced internal circuit boards with new ones brought up on Atlantis and got the unit running again.

The Atlantis astronauts are working through a busy day in space, transferring equipment from the shuttle to the International Space Station and making preparations for a second spacewalk Saturday. Shuttle flight engineer Randolph Bresnik, meanwhile, awaited word from Earth on the birth of his second child, a girl, scheduled for delivery Friday two weeks ahead of his wife's December due date.

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Atlantis' robotic arm has grappled the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier 2 to prepare for tomorrow's installation of this second spare parts pallet onto the International Space Station.

The astronauts are spending the day delivering equipment from the shuttle's crew cabin over to the space station and moving items from station over to Atlantis for return to Earth. A series of live media interviews are planned throughout the day as well.

The astronauts were awakened to begin Flight Day 5 with the song "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge played for mission specialist Leland Melvin.

The crews of the shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station were awakened Thursday night by what flight controllers quickly concluded was a false alarm indicating a sudden depressurization. That false alarm caused ventilation fans to shut down, resulting in a fire alarm tripping in the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory module.

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Houston estimates it will be about an hour before environmental control systems are reactivated following the false alarms.

Mission Control has determined the rapid depressurization and smoke alarms were false. The crew and station are in no danger.

Appears to be false alarms. Ground controllers and the crew aboard the outpost are going through emergency procedures just in case.

Caution and warning alarms have sounded inside the International Space Station, awaking the astronauts.

Read our earlier status center coverage.