Atlantis Astronauts Tackle Pair Of Tasks On 2nd Spacewalk

HOUSTON (AP) – Two astronauts floated outside the international space station Wednesday with a couple of tasks on their to-do list: help fold up a solar wing and complete work on the newest segment to power the orbiting outpost.

Space shuttle Atlantis astronauts Patrick Forrester and Steve Swanson spent the first hour of their scheduled 6-hour spacewalk helping put a 115-foot solar wing away in its storage box.

NASA was hoping to avoid problems that plagued the removal of another power-generating wing last year. The spacewalk began at 2:28 p.m. EDT as the astronauts were 206 miles above eastern Europe.

A few hours before the spacewalk began, shuttle astronauts were retracting the array one section at a time by computer command. The solar wing’s retraction seemed to be going fairly smoothly. When they took a break before the spacewalk’s start, astronauts had managed to retract nearly a quarter of its 31 sections.

“We appreciate the hard work. We got a lot further than we anticipated,” said Mission Control. When it looked like the solar panels were starting to bunch up or fold backward, Mission Control periodically wiggled the array by remote control to loosen guide wires and grommets, the metal eyelets through which guide wires run.

NASA doesn’t expect to finish the retraction until possibly Thursday. The folding up of a similar 115-foot solar array during a December shuttle mission was problematic when guide wires got stuck on grommets.

The old array needs to be folded up so a new set of solar panels, delivered to the space station this week, can follow the sun to generate power. The new array was unfolded Tuesday.

Forrester and Swanson were to spend most of their spacewalk – the second one of Atlantis’ mission to the space station – helping activate a Ferris-wheel-like rotating joint that allows the solar array to track the sun.

Back on the ground, NASA engineers were still figuring out how best to repair a loose thermal protection blanket on the shuttle that peeled back during launch last week.

NASA managers were focusing on sewing the blanket with stainless steel wire and an instrument that resembles a small needle.

The 4-by-6-inch damaged section sits over an engine pod. A final decision on the repair technique and whether it would be done during the mission’s third spacewalk or a newly added fourth one could be made on Wednesday.

Engineers don’t think the damaged section of the thermal blanket, which protects part of the shuttle from the blazing heat of re-entry, would endanger the spacecraft during landing. But it could cause enough damage to require schedule-busting repairs.

Since shuttle damage resulted in the 2003 Columbia disaster that killed seven astronauts, NASA has greatly focused on any problems that could jeopardize a shuttle’s re-entry.

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press Writer

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) AP-NY-06-13-07 1626EDT