Two spacewalking astronauts successfully rewired half of the international space station, a job that when finished will allow the orbiting outpost to double the size of its crew and add two more labs in the coming years.
Flight controllers on the ground happily reported to the space station that power was flowing through two electrical channels hooked up by astronauts Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang on Thursday.
NASA immediately started powering up systems aboard a large section of the space station; the power had to be turned off for the spacewalkers' safety while they were handling the electrical connections.
The space agency also rushed to get the space station's ammonia cooling system operating again before the new electrical equipment overheated. It took less than an hour for the cooling system to start running smoothly.
"Today went as close to `without a hitch' as you can possibly have a spacewalk go," John Curry, NASA's lead flight director for the space station, said at a briefing late on Thursday.
It was the second spacewalk for Curbeam and Fuglesang since space shuttle Discovery arrived at the orbiting lab for a seven-day visit. The five-hour foray ended at 7:41pm Florida time on Thursday, an hour earlier than planned, and marked the 75th spacewalk dedicated to assembling the space station.
The rewiring job involved switching the space station from its old, temporary power source to its new one -- a pair of solar arrays that were delivered in September. The spacewalkers had to unhook three dozen electrical hoses and reconnect them. The astronauts also completed some housekeeping tasks.
During a short break, the spacewalkers watched shooting stars and the blaze of the aurora borealis, or northern lights phenomenon, which is caused by solar flares colliding with Earth's atmosphere. A solar flare earlier this week forced the astronauts to sleep in protective areas of the station and shuttle as a precaution.
"Gosh, they're beautiful," Curbeam said.
A third spacewalk set for yesterday was to repeat the rewiring job, but on the flip side of the station's US segment.
Before the start of the spacewalk, NASA flight controllers on the ground powered down sections of the station, losing some of the redundancy the space agency likes to have in its systems.
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