(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-29 16:15

"We have lots of time to work through this problem. It's not an immediate issue," Suffredini said at a news conference Sunday afternoon following the spacewalk.

The problem overshadowed the rest of Sunday's spacewalk, the second of five planned for Discovery's construction mission.

The spacewalkers' first job out the hatch was to disconnect bolts and cables holding a 35-foot-long, 35,000-pound girder to the orbiting complex, so astronauts working inside could pull it away with the robot arm. It was the first time the girder and its attached solar power wings were moved since being installed seven years ago, and the job went well.

The girder will be reattached to another spot on the space station Tuesday, and its solar wings unfurled to their full 240 feet across. NASA considers this one of the most difficult construction jobs ever attempted in orbit.

During their 6 1/2 hours outside, Tani and Parazynski also added handrails and other equipment to the outside of Harmony, the school-bus-size compartment that was delivered by Discovery and attached to the space station last week. They did not have enough time to finish installing a grappling hook to Harmony, and they had to skip some other work, too.

The rotary joint inspection was added to the spacewalk just a few days ago.

Another last-minute chore involved checking the railroad-like tracks for the space station's robot arm, to see whether any sharp edges might be protruding. Tani found dozens of micrometeorite dings on a handrail for the tracks but said they did not look particularly sharp.

Spacewalking astronauts have cut their gloves twice on previous missions, and NASA wants to find out where that's happening.

Mission managers, meanwhile, formally cleared Discovery for re-entry on November 6, saying its thermal shielding is in good, solid condition. It is an eagerly awaited milestone in each mission, based on exhaustive photography and inspections, ever since the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in 2003.

The astronauts were awoken at 12:38 EDT Monday to the sounds of Wynton Marsalis' jazzy instrumental "One By One" as the space station drifted about 223 miles above the far southern Pacific Ocean.

"Space is certainly a special place to be and I'd like to thank my parents ... for that song," astronaut Stephanie Wilson said, a couple of hours before she was scheduled to be back at the controls of the shuttle's robotic arm. "I love them very much and I couldn't do this mission or anything that I've done in my life without their love and their support."

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