Monday, December 18, 2006

Spacewalkers try to free jammed array

[q url="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/4410494.html"]Two astronauts stepped outside the international space station on an impromptu spacewalk Monday to try to fold up a stubborn, accordion-like solar array.


Space shuttle Discovery's Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang were assigned to get the jammed array to retract completely into a box. It was the fourth spacewalk of Discovery's flight to the orbiting outpost.


The electricity-generating array became stuck last Wednesday in the halfway-retracted position as it was being folded up by remote control. After repeated efforts to get it to retract _ including attempts to shake it loose by having an astronaut exercise vigorously aboard the space station _ NASA decided to send two cosmic mechanics out to fix it.

source

Tags: spacewalk | jammed | array | Space shuttle | Houston | Discovery

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