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Astronauts avoid injury in difficult space walk

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 1, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL - Four or five flakes of toxic ammonia dripped from a cooling line cap Wednesday but it appears none of it touched two U.S. astronauts conducting the first of three space walks planned outside the international space station over the next nine days.

The leak occurred late in the almost eight-hour space walk, as astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams disconnected and prepared to stow away two fluid lines that had been connected to an ammonia reservoir outside the space station.

Tests in the airlock showed no contamination, and the walk ended at 6:09 p.m., seven hours and 55 minutes after it started.

Ammonia, which can cause contamination upon contact, was a big concern since the toxic substance leaked out of a cooling line onto astronaut Robert Curbeam's spacesuit when he performed a similar task in 2001.

Lopez-Alegria and Williams did not face the same problems as Curbeam did with ammonia. Nevertheless, Mission Control told the astronauts to remain in their spacesuits for an extra 25 minutes once they entered the station's airlock to make sure there was no ammonia on their suit that could contaminate the orbiting lab.

During Wednesday's space walk 220 miles above Earth, the astronauts switched coolant lines from a temporary cooling system to a permanent one and secured a thermal cover around an obsolete radiator that Mission Control retracted by remote control. Lopez-Alegria made electrical connections for a new system that will allow power from the station to be shared with a docked shuttle.

[Last modified February 1, 2007, 01:45:10]