A sick German astronaut has delayed by 24 hours a spacewalk that had been set for yesterday to attach the European-made Columbus laboratory to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), a NASA spokesman said.
Just after the shuttle Atlantis docked with the ISS, mission chief John Shannon told reporters German astronaut Hans Schlegel, one of the Atlantis' crew of seven, was unwell, without giving details.
"We will delay the EVA [Extra Vehicular Activity, or spacewalk] by one day and Hans Schlegel will be excused," he said.
PHOTO: AFP
"It's a private medical matter," Shannon said. "I won't say more ... It's not life threatening."
He said the 11-day mission of the Atlantis would also be extended by one day, with return to Earth set for Feb. 19.
Schlegel will be replaced by US astronaut Stanley Love on the spacewalk which has been delayed until today, Shannon said.
His illness, the spokesman said, is "not going to impact any of the objectives of the mission," adding that Schlegel will still take part in the second spacewalk of the mission -- now rescheduled for Wednesday -- with US astronaut Rex Walheim.
A European Space Agency official who asked not to be identified said Schlegel's illness was "nothing serious." Images of Atlantis astronauts boarding the ISS showed a seemingly normal Schagel moving a little slower than his colleagues.
The Atlantis' third spacewalk by Walheim and Love has also been rescheduled, NASA said.
Before announcing the spacewalk delay, Shannon Sarafin said two minor technical glitches had been detected on the Atlantis. One of three navigational computers had failed -- posing no threat to the mission, he said -- and was about to be fixed.
The other glitch, he said, was a small tear in the shuttle's thermal blanket that appeared to be minor.
The announcements came a few hours after the Atlantis docked with the ISS on Saturday and the hatches between the two spacecrafts were opened allowing the visiting astronauts to be greeted by their three ISS colleagues.
The Atlantis mission to deliver the 10-tonne Columbus laboratory is marking a milestone in Europe's role in space.
Columbus, the first ISS addition not made in the US or Russia, will be used for biotechnology and medicine experiments involving microgravity. It cost 1.3 billion euros (US$2 billion), paid mostly by Germany, Italy and France.
Astronauts will use the ISS's robotic arm to transfer Columbus out of the shuttle's payload bay and attach it to the station.
On their first day in orbit on Friday the Atlantis crew trained a high-definition camera mounted on the shuttle's robotic arm on the spaceship's thermal shield to search for any damage that may have occurred during liftoff.
Shannon said three small foam losses from the shuttle's external fuel tank were filmed in the minutes after liftoff on Thursday, one of which may have struck the shuttle's thermal shield without, however, causing any apparent damage.
Examining the shuttle's heat shield became established procedure after the February 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster. A piece of foam insulation broke off during Columbia's liftoff, damaging the shuttle's external heat tiles and leading to the craft's destruction when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere killing seven astronauts.
Besides Schlegel, the Atlantis crew includes astronaut Leopold Eyharts of France. Currently US and Russian astronauts are aboard the space station.
Eyharts will begin Europe's second longest stay on the space station by replacing US astronaut Dan Tani. The German astronaut of the European Space Agency, Thomas Reiter, stayed six months in the station in 2006.
The space shuttle was originally scheduled for blastoff on Dec. 6 as part of the tight schedule of shuttle flights to complete ISS construction by 2010, when the three-craft US shuttle fleet is to be retired.
But malfunctioning circuits in the fuel gauges of the spacecraft's liquid hydrogen tank forced a two-month delay until the problem was fixed.
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