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Despite tool trouble and a hot suit,6-hour space walk is a success
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 23, 2007
KOROLYOV, Russia - A U.S. astronaut and his Russian crewmate took their tools and stepped outside the international space station for an orbital repair job Thursday, fighting an overheated spacesuit to fix a faulty antenna on a Russian cargo ship. When a hammer didn't do the trick, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin cut a metal lock holding the antenna in place with a tool resembling garden shears - breathing heavily in the heat of a suit plagued by temperature control problems through much of the 6-hour, 13-minute space walk. The heat fogged up his helmet's glass visor, impairing his view at times. Tyurin and American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria were dispatched to free up the stuck antenna on the Russian cargo ship, to keep it from snagging when the vessel undocks from the station. The cargo ship must be jettisoned from the station before a Soyuz spacecraft can deliver a new crew in early April. When the cargo ship docked with the station in October, the antenna got stuck in a railing. The crew was unable to free the antenna during a previous space walk.
[Last modified February 23, 2007, 01:20:57]
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