Atlantis Prepares for 1st Spacewalk
Monday’s first STS-122 spacewalk has been cancelled from Sunday to Monday, because of Germany’s Hans Schlegel taking ill with what NASA refers to as a medical issue, according to John Shannon, deputy shuttle program manage on Saturday evening. He seems to be better today, but will not participate in the first of three spacewalks on Monday morning. It is still unknown whether he will be able to do his second scheduled spacewalk when it is time.
Hans Schlegel, age 56, was one of the two astronauts scheduled, along with Rex Walheim, to attach the Columbus science laboratory to the starboard side of the Harmony Node. Presently he has been replaced on Monday by Mission Specialist Stanley Love. NASA reports that it is common for astronauts to become ill after being launched into space, experiencing nausea and sickness, such as what occurred to Schlegel by the time he reached the International Space station. .
The plan is for both astronauts to stay in the U.S. airlock overnight to purge nitrogen from their bodies, before beginning to do Monday’s scheduled spacewalk, which will begin at 9:35 a.m. The station’s robotic arm operators will be on hand to assist the astronauts as they begin, one day later than as planned. The mission itself has also been extended one day to make up for the delay and complete what has been scheduled to do. The $1.9 billion dollar installation of the Columbus lab, which is Europe’s part of the $100 billion dollar International Space Station,
Sunday began the focused inspections on Atlantis in order to see if any damage has been done on the space shuttle. When in flight, a 100-feet laser-tipped boom had been used to check the Atlantis over and found the small tear the day after launching, but today the small tear in the thermal blanket on the shuttle’s steering engines was examined more thoroughly with a camera attached to the robotic arm. The tear was found to be approximately 1.3 inches, in the thermal blanket on the shuttle’s right Orbital Maneuvering System pod. This system pod does many things of importance–provides the thrust for orbit insertion, orbit circularization, orbital transfer, rendezvous, deorbit, abort to orbit and orbit once around–providing up to 1,000 pounds of propellant to the aft reaction control systems.
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
