By Xinhua
Washington : Atlantis shuttle astronauts wrapped up nearly eight hours of spacewalk Monday after successfully attaching Europe’s Columbus Laboratory to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).
Astronauts Rex Walheim and Stanley Love spent almost eight hours working to help attach the 10-ton Columbus laboratory to the ISS and add a new room to the high-flying outpost.
“Houston, Munich, the European Columbus laboratory module is now a part of the ISS,” said French astronaut Leopold Eyharts from the space station as the new lab arrived at 4:44 p.m. EST (2144 GMT).
With the exception of stubborn power cables, which waylaid the spacewalkers for an hour, the spacewalk appeared to go smoothly despite a last-minute astronaut switch that put Love in a slot originally reserved for German astronaut Hans Schlegel.
Mission managers replaced Schlegel with Love on Saturday due toan undisclosed medical issue. Schlegel assisted Atlantis pilot Alan Poindexter to choreograph Monday’s spacewalk from inside the shuttle and is expected to take part in the mission’s second spacewalk on Wednesday.
Monday’s spacewalk, the first of three planned for Atlantis’ 11-day mission, began at 9:13 a.m. EST (1413 GMT) and ran for seven hours, 58 minutes, marking the first spacewalk for Love and the third for Walheim.
Astronauts plan to open the Columbus lab on Tuesday to christen the 7-meter laboratory and outfit it for orbital flight. The new module is about 4.5 meters wide and adds an extra 75 cubic meters of breathing room aboard the ISS.
Columbus is built to hold a total of 16 equipment racks, 10 of which will be devoted to scientific research. The European Space Agency, which built the laboratory, has set up a new control center near Munich, Germany, to oversee the module’s daily operations.
In addition to the science racks launched with the module, Walheim and Love will add two exterior experiments to study the sun and monitor the space environment during a planned Friday excursion.
During their spacewalk, Walheim and Love attached a grapple fixture to Columbus to provide a handle for the station’s robotic arm. They also loosened bolts and disconnected cables on a spent nitrogen tank serving the station’s cooling system, priming it for replacement during a Wednesday spacewalk.
Love also spotted what appeared to be a ding, possibly caused by orbital debris or a micrometeorite, on a handrail near the station’s Quest airlock.
Mission Control asked the spacewalkers to photograph the ding as part of an ongoing survey of areas that may pose a tear hazard to an astronaut’s spacesuit gloves.
Monday’s spacewalk marked the 102nd dedicated to space station construction, leaving the orbital laboratory about 57 percent complete, mission managers said. By the excursion’s close, Walheimracked up 22 hours and 13 minutes of spacewalking time while Love concluded with 7 hours and 58 minutes.