Two astronauts from the US shuttle Endeavour have successfully completed the first of five scheduled spacewalks aimed at completing a Japanese laboratory at the International Space Station, NASA said.
Tim Kopra, who made his first spacewalk, and Dave Wolf, an old hand with four walks under his belt, returned to the space station’s decompression chamber and closed the airlock at 9:51pm GMT on Saturday, 37 minutes ahead of schedule, NASA reported.
The duo’s spacewalk lasted five hours and 32 minutes, US space agency officials said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“The third and final piece of Japan’s Kibo laboratory was assembled on orbit Saturday, a symphony of robotic and spacewalking performances by the 13-member orchestra aboard the International Space Station complex,” NASA said in a statement.
The 1.9-tonne unit, known as the Japanese Exposed Facility (JEF), will serve “as a type of porch for experiments that require direct exposure to space,” NASA said.
From inside the space station, astronauts Koichi Wakata and Doug Hurley used the station’s Canadarm2 to grasp the JEF unit and lift it out of the Endeavour payload bay.
“They handed the facility to the shuttle’s Canadarm and moved the station’s arm into position for installation. The shuttle arm handed off the new Kibo component to the station arm, and then the station arm was used to move the new ‘porch’ into position for installation to the Kibo pressurized module,” NASA said.
Earlier, on their first full day in space, the Endeavour crew of six Americans and one Canadian tested rendezvous equipment, installed a camera for the orbiter docking system and extended the docking ring that sits on top of the system.
The shuttle successfully docked at the space station on Friday amid questions about the integrity of the shuttle’s heat shield tiles.
However, NASA on Saturday said that a close analysis of pictures of Endeavour’s heat shield confirmed the absence of any damage.
The entry of Endeavour’s crew aboard the space station brought the number of astronauts inside the orbiting space station to a record 13.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion