Saturday, July 25, 2009

Shuttle Endeavour Spavewalks (EVAs)

In a series of spacewalks, astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour added a front porch to Kibo, the Japanese experiment module aboard the International Space Station.

The exposed facility was fitted with its first suite of experiments – an
X-ray telescope that can study the
entire sky, a neutron monitor to observe solar flares and space radiation, and a particle collector. (Image: NASA)

The astronauts also replaced batteries on the space station's oldest solar array, but the first battery swap spacewalk on Wednesday had to be cut short when levels of carbon dioxide spiked in the spacesuit of shuttle astronaut Christopher Cassidy (shown here). NASA thinks the problem was triggered when Cassidy "got off to a fast start in his first spacewalk, overtaxing the lithium hydroxide that is used to scrub carbon dioxide from his air supply", reports CBS News. Mission controllers told the crew to take things more slowly on subsequent spacewalks.

No comments:

Post a Comment