Astronauts on the international space station faced the longest and hardest spacewalk of their mission yesterday, a seven-hour-plus excursion to wrap up repair work on a gummed-up joint.
As the crews of the orbiting shuttle-station complex focused on the greasy outdoor extravaganza, engineers back on Earth struggled to understand a potentially serious problem with a newly delivered recycling system that is supposed to turn astronauts’ urine into drinking water.
The US$154 million system shut down again on Friday and had managers wondering whether space shuttle Endeavour would bring back any samples of processed urine. The equipment has to work properly and the water has to pass safety tests in order for the space agency to double the size of the station crew next year.
PHOTO: AFP
At a news conference on Friday, NASA astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said her upcoming spacewalk — the third of the mission — would be busier than usual. She and Steven Bowen have to finish cleaning and lubricating a jammed solar wing-rotating joint and put in new bearings.
“It looks like it’s going to be challenging,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Late on Friday, Stefanyshyn-Piper and Bowen got permission to take out an extra tool. Mission managers decided a caulking gun set aside for potential repair work on Endeavour’s heat shield could double as a grease gun in a pinch.
The astronauts ended up with a grease gun shortage after a US$100,000 tool kit floated away during Tuesday’s spacewalk.
Stefanyshyn-Piper was trying to clean up grease that had leaked all over when the bag and the tools inside got away.
The joint is supposed to keep the solar wings on the right side of the space station pointed toward the sun. It stopped working normally more than a year ago, after grinding parts left it full of metal grit.
Unlike the two previous spacewalks, only joint repair work was on yesterday’s outdoor agenda. A fourth and final spacewalk tomorrow will have astronauts adding grease to a twin joint on the opposite side of the space station that is working fine.
As for the trouble with the water recycling system, no one was surprised.
Space station commander Mike Fincke said it’s common for things to go wrong in a flight test and stressed that he wasn’t worried — so far. Nor was he concerned about eventually drinking the final product.
“It’s just the water that’s taken out,” Fincke said on Friday.
“It’s really clean and purified water. In fact, it’s probably more pure than most people’s tap water. So I’m not afraid to drink it,” he said.
Of all the home-improvement gear delivered to the space station by Endeavour, the water recycling system has drawn the most attention. NASA sees it as the future in deep-space exploration — and also to future life on the home planet.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not