BEIJING, June 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Two
astronauts finished up their maintenance jobs on the international space
station on Thursday, the first of such spacewalk scheduled for the two
crewmen since their arrival at the space station in early April.
The spacewalk took 6.5 hours, longer than expected,
but nowhere near the record of eight hours and 56 minutes set in 2001.
All was finished except for replacing a video camera
on a transport platform used to construct the orbiting outpost.
NASA controllers conferred with their Russian
counterparts beforehand on whether they would carry out the task and
decided to do so after the Russians agreed to tack on an extra 50 minutes for
spacewalking.
Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov attached himself
to the end of a boom that can extend to 50 feet while U.S. flight engineer
Jeff Williams maneuvered him to an area on the station where the Russian
commander installed a new vent for a broken oxygen-generation system.
Vinogradov and Williams also repositioned a cable
interfering with the signal of a navigation antenna, inspected another antenna
that may be preventing a reboost engine from working properly, and retrieved a
thruster residue collection plate, a contamination monitoring device and biology
experiments.
NASA controllers took over command of the spacewalk
from the Russians for the task of replacing the camera. In the middle of their
spacewalking tasks, a small piece from a foot restraint floated away from
Vinogradov, becoming space debris, but it had no effect on the station.
During their careers, Vinogradov has conducted five
previous spacewalks; Williams has made one. Enditem
(Agencies)
