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Woman astronaut sets new record

Schoolchildren hold Indian flags and portraits of Sunita Williams, a US astronaut of Indian heritage, and pray for her safe return from space in Ahmadabad, India, on Friday. Williams made history yesterday when she set a new record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman. PHOTO: AP

A US astronaut of Indian heritage made history early yesterday when she set a new record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman.

At 1:47am, International Space Station (ISS) engineer Sunita Williams, whose father hails from Gujarat, surpassed the 188-day, four-hour mark set by her compatriot Shannon Lucid in 1996, US officials said.

It was not the first record set by Williams, who began her space journey on Dec. 10.

Earlier this year, she logged 29 hours and 17 minutes in four space walks, eclipsing the record held by astronaut Kathryn Thornton for most spacewalk time by a woman.

And last April, she became the first astronaut to run a marathon in orbit, finishing it in four hours and 24 minutes.

On Friday, astronauts fixed a tear in the shuttle Atlantis' heat shield and repaired two main computers at the International Space Station after an unprecedented systems breakdown that lasted 48 hours, said Brandy Dean, a NASA spokeswoman.

"They got them running around 3pm," Dean said, adding that the technical teams were monitoring the system to see how it reacted to the adjustments.

"For now it's working," she said. "This is good news. It's very encouraging."

Astronauts used a jumper cable to bypass a faulty power switch, NASA said on its Web site. The computers were to run overnight for testing yesterday morning.

Russian controllers blamed the glitch on installation of the ISS' new solar panels, but the head of the Russian space operator RKK Energia said he did not blame the visiting crew for the problem.

"This is just a coincidence," Nikolai Sevastyanov said.

Mike Suffredini, space station program manager, said: "I think we're in good shape. We still have a lot of options to go through to recover these machines. We've got a talented group of people to look at attitude control."

Although the computers stabilize the station in orbit and manage critical oxygen and water supplies, the crew was not in danger, Suffredini said.

"We are in a very good position from a life-support perspective," Suffredini said from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "We have plenty of oxygen on board."

With the computers off line, the station's gyroscopes kept the orbiting laboratory on an even keel, with the propulsion system of the docked shuttle Atlantis providing backup, NASA said.

NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier said there was only "an extremely remote chance" that the problems could force the shuttle and ISS crews to abandon the station.

Russian mission official Sergei Krikalyov told CNN earlier on Friday that the glitch "may create some problems but for sure no kind of crisis" thanks to backup systems.

Russia may send its cargo vessel Progress to the ISS earlier, on July 23 instead of its planned August launch, to deliver spare parts for the computers, an official said.

Meanwhile, astronauts completed the third of four planned spacewalks -- this one to repair a patch of thermal blanket to the rear of the shuttle.

The spacewalk lasted two minutes short of eight hours, and astronauts used surgical staples to pin down a corner of the blanket, which came loose as the shuttle reached escape velocity from the Kennedy Space Center on June 8.

NASA has decided to prolong the mission two extra days until June 21 to make time for the repair.
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