Science and Health

Spacewalk hit by brief power outage, no danger

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-05-18 11:27

Spacewalk hit by brief power outage, no danger

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is backdropped against the Earth prior to docking with the International Space Station in this handout photo provided by NASA and taken May 16, 2010. [Agencies]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- A partial power outage at the International Space Station briefly interrupted Monday's spacewalk, knocking out robotic camera views of the two astronauts as they worked to install a spare antenna.

The outage happened two hours into the 7-hour spacewalk by Atlantis crewmen Garrett Reisman and Stephen Bowen. The space station's main command-and-control computer suddenly crashed. A backup computer kicked in, but power temporarily was lost to some equipment, including the video monitors being used by the robot arm operator, Piers Sellers.

Reisman was perched on the end of the space station's 58-foot robot (17-meter) arm when Sellers lost his camera views. Bowen was working with connectors on the space station's framework. Both were told to stop what they were doing.

NASA said neither spacewalker was ever in any danger. In less than a half-hour, everything was back to normal, although the backup computer remained in charge.

"Ah, much better," Sellers said when his camera views came back.

The spacewalkers had to contend with a tough connector and refasten some bolts. A few hours later, the 6-foot dish antenna and its boom were installed on the space station. Bowen proudly shook the 14-foot (4-meter) structure. "It doesn't wobble anywhere," he said.

A tiny gap remained between the dish and boom, however, and Mission Control had the astronauts strap the assembly down as engineers analyzed the situation.

The space shuttle Atlantis' remote sensor system whose pan and tilt mechanism is not moving properly due to a pinched cable is seen in this photo released by NASA May 15, 2010. [Agencies]

The astronauts next hooked up a storage platform for the station's Canadian-built robot, named Dextre, and loosened the bolts on six batteries that will be replaced on the next two spacewalks. They jokingly asked for more work as the spacewalk went into an hour of overtime.

"You guys might not be tired, but I'm done," said Dominic "Tony" Antonelli, who monitored everything from inside.

Reisman spent the entire spacewalk on the end of the robot arm, and enjoyed the ride.

"I'm way the heck up here now," Reisman called out from his perch. "I might only be about 5-foot-4, but right now, I think I'm the highest person around. Woooo!"

"Yeah, like you're two-thirds of the way up of being like a Hubble guy," replied astronaut Michael Good from inside the space station. Good worked on the Hubble Space Telescope last May in a considerably higher orbit.