Astronauts outfit Japan's new space lab
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HOUSTON (Reuters) - A pair of spacewalking astronauts worked on the exterior of Japan's gleaming new orbital lab on Thursday while crewmates aboard the International Space Station filled its inside with hardware.
On the second spacewalk of a busy two-week mission to the station by U.S. shuttle Discovery, astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan prepared the research laboratory's robotic arm for deployment, installing cameras needed to judge clearances.
NASA said initial tests showed the cameras were working.
The spacewalk lasted seven hours and 11 minutes. Spacewalks are routine on such missions but are highly dangerous and all parties involved breathe a sigh of relief when they are over.
Among other tasks, the spacewalkers removed a television camera from the station's truss that has a failing power supply. Its power supply will be replaced and it will be reinstalled on the mission's third and final spacewalk scheduled for Sunday.
Fossum and Garan also prepared Kibo's docking port to hold its storage room for tools and spare parts, which was temporarily berthed to the station until Kibo's arrival.
The spacewalkers needed to remove thermal covers and loosen locks that anchored equipment during Saturday's rocket ride into space. The storage room or logistics module will be installed on top of Kibo on Friday using the station's Canadian-made robotic arm.
"Everything looks good for the logistic module's relocation," said NASA commentator Brandi Dean as the spacewalkers neared the end of their tasks 210 miles above Earth.
The shuttle, which arrived on Monday, carried Kibo, a new station crewmember and supplies including a new pump for the station's broken toilet.
Kibo, a cylinder about the size of a tour bus, is the largest of the outpost's three laboratories. It is 37 feet (11 m) long and it tips the scales at more than 16 tonnes.
The complex is the centerpiece of Japan's human space flight program and its primary contribution to the $100 billion space station.
Inside other astronauts manhandled refrigerator-sized but weightless racks into the complex, floating freely around its spacious interior.
On Friday the lab's robotic arm is scheduled to be activated and it will be deployed and tested for the first time on Saturday.
NASA is nearing completion of the space station, with seven construction missions and two resupply flights remaining before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
The U.S. space agency also plans a final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in October before turning its attention to developing a fleet of new spaceships that in addition to reaching the space station can travel to the moon.
(Editing by Tom Brown and Cynthia Osterman)
