With the first planned excursion of Expedition 41 just a week away, the International Space Station’s six-person crew spent Tuesday preparing spacewalking tools and equipment, while managing a packed agenda of scientific research and maintenance. During the first six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk, slated to begin on Oct. 7 around 8:10 a.m., Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst will transfer a previously uninstalled pump module from its temporary stowage location to the External Stowage Platform-2. The two spacewalkers also will install the Mobile Transporter Relay Assembly that adds the capability to provide “keep-alive” power to the system that moves the station’s robotic arm between worksites. Flight Engineer Barry Wilmore will join Wiseman for the second Expedition 41 spacewalk on Oct. 15. Overnight, the robotics officers at Houston’s Mission Control Center remotely commanded Canadarm2 to remove the ISS-Rapid Scatterometer, or RapidScat, from the trunk of the recently arrived SpaceX Dragon cargo craft and attach it to its adapter on the station’s Columbus laboratory. Designed to monitor ocean winds from the station’s vantage point, RapidScat is a space-based scatterometer that uses radar pulses reflected from the oceans surface from different angles to calculate surface wind speed and direction. This information will be useful for weather forecasting and hurricane monitoring. Read more: go.nasa.gov/1CEUyVI
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 20:41:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015