Story Continues BelowThe fifth day of the shuttle mission focused on the second of five planned spacewalks of the mission - this one performed by mission specialists Dave Wolf and Tom Marshburn.
Wolf and Marshburn performed the six hour, 53 minute extravehicular excursion to complete a number of station hardware installation tasks.
Exiting from the Quest Airlock at 11:27 a.m. EDT, Wolf removed three hardware spares - a Ku-Band Space-to-Ground Antenna, a Pump Module and a Linear Drive Unit, from an Integrated Cargo Carrier. With each spare in hand, Wolf rode the space station robotic arm to the P3 Truss where a stowage platform awaited. There he and Marshburn attached them for long-term storage.
Mission Specialist Julie Payette and Pilot Doug Hurley operated the robotic arm. Marshburn mounted a grapple bar onto an ammonia tank assembly so that the next space shuttle crew of STS-128 can move the tank by robotic arm. Marshburn also attached two insulation sleeves for external power connectors to the Station to Shuttle Power Transfer System. Wolf and Marshburn completed most of the planned tasks during today's EVA.
The spacewalkers encountered no serious problems, but the work took longer than anticipated, so mission control decided to defer the final task that had been planned. A new camera that was to be installed on the Japanese Exposed Facility will instead be installed on a future spacewalk.
Marshburn installed insulation on electrical cables used to route station power to the shuttle as a get-ahead task instead. Meanwhile, Wolf performed cleanup tasks before both astronauts returned to the station's airlock.
The spacewalk concluded at 6:20 p.m. EDT. It was Wolf's sixth spacewalk and the first for Marshburn. Today's EVA was the 127th spacewalk dedicated to assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station.
Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Frank De Winne replaced components of the Waste Hygiene Compartment toilet in the Destiny laboratory. The system's dose pump failed Sunday. After Padalka and De Winne replaced the separator pump, control panel and the COT, a container that holds liquid, the system was activated and performed normally.
Meanwhile, Tim Kopra continued with his familiarization of the space station, having recently replaced Koichi Wakata as an Expedition 20 Flight Engineer.
(The Spacearium / Space Media Corporation)
JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, TX - Forty years to the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic first spacewalk on the Moon, astronauts on board the International Space Station and shuttle Endeavour conducted a seven hour spacewalk outside the orbiting complex as NASA continues to march toward completion of station assembly, perhaps the only engineering task in the history of Mankind that can rival, or arguably exceed, the Apollo program in complexity.
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