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ZL2VAL > SAREX 10.01.02 17:00l 109 Lines 4651 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Station Crew Gears Up for Two January Spacewalks
By Todd Halvorson
Cape Canaveral
Bureau Chief
posted: 02:00 pm ET
04 January 2002
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The U.S.-Russian crew aboard the International
Space Station will step up work outside the orbital outpost this month,
setting out on two spacewalks aimed at carrying out key assembly jobs at
the 17-story complex.
Station commander Yuri Onufrienko and flight engineer Carl Walz are
scheduled to venture outside the outpost at 3:50 p.m. EST (2050 GMT) Jan.
14 on the first of the two excursions.
The job at hand: Moving a Russian Strela cargo boom from a stowage point
outside a conical U.S. docking port to the exterior of the station's
Russian Zarya space tug, which doubles as an orbital warehouse at the
outpost.
James Hartsfield, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,
said the idea would be to place the crane within reach of a similar boom
that was erected outside the station's Russian Pirs airlock late last
year.
Hefty cargoes as well as suited astronauts and cosmonauts then will be
able to be moved from one crane to another during future construction and
maintenance work outside the outpost, he said.
The spacewalk is expected to take about six hours to complete and
represents the first of two sorties the station crew plans to perform
outside the outpost this month.
Onufrienko and flight engineer Daniel Bursch will head outside the
station Jan. 25 to set up ham radio and Russian television antennas on
the outer hull of the outpost's Russian-built Zvezda crew quarters.
Onufrienko and Bursch also will carry out several other chores during
that excursion.
Metal deflectors will be mounted next to Zvezda steering thrusters to
prevent toxic rocket exhaust from damaging the exterior of the bus-sized
module, and contamination monitors also will be set up in the same area.
In addition, the pair will retrieve a materials science experiment that
was set up outside the station during an earlier spacewalk.
The two spacewalks will be the first of as many as eight such excursions
that are tentatively planned at the station during the tenure of the
Expedition Four crew.
A visiting shuttle crew is slated to perform four spacewalks during an
April mission to deliver and install the central segment of a huge
station truss that will eventually stretch 356 feet (108 meters) from end
to end.
Once the shuttle crew departs, Busch and Walz are tentatively scheduled
to carry out as many as two more spacewalks to finish outfitting the
truss segment.
Launched Dec. 5 aboard shuttle Endeavour, the Expedition Four crew
boarded the station two days later, setting out on a
five-and-a-half-month tour of duty.
Much of their first month in orbit has been spent unloading a Russian
Progress cargo carrier and starting up some of the 65 U.S. and Russian
research experiments they plan to carry out onboard the outpost.
The Progress cargo carrier will serve as a giant trashcan over the next
two months before it is jettisoned from the station Feb. 27 and then sent
on a destructive plunge back through Earth's atmosphere.
A new Progress space freighter then is scheduled to arrive at the station
three days later, hauling up food, water, clothing and station equipment
to the crew.
The crew's first visitors are scheduled to launch April 4 aboard shuttle
Atlantis. The seven U.S. astronauts are to arrive at the station two days
later with the central truss segment.
A Russian Soyuz taxi crew then is slated to launch April 17 on an
eight-day round-trip to the station. Headed by veteran cosmonaut Yuri
Gidzenko, that crew will include European Space Agency astronaut Roberto
Vittori and Mark Shuttlesworth, an Internet entrepreneur who is destined
to become the first South African to fly in space.
The Expedition Four crew now is scheduled to return to Earth May 13
aboard shuttle Endeavour, capping a 159-day stay in orbit. Their
replacements - Russian cosmonauts Valeri Korzun and Sergei Treschev and
U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson - are to remain at the outpost until
mid-September.
=====================================
73 de Alan
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