Friday, June 02, 2006
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - The two astronauts aboard the International Space Station venture out of the orbital compound on Thursday to start a spacewalk aimed at conducting almost six hours of repairs and maintenance.
In the first of two spacewalks intended during their six-month stay in space, station leader Pavel Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams deliberate to set up a new vent for a balky Russian oxygen generator, put back a camera needed for future station meeting tasks and retrieve a science experiment for return to Earth.
Before a spacewalk, astronauts have to breathe pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams. The nitrogen could cause a dangerous condition known as "the bends," which usually afflicts divers who surface from deep water too quickly.
Vinogradov, who was making his sixth spacewalk, and Williams, who has complete one previous spacewalk, spent more than two weeks collecting gear and practicing procedures for their outing. They had to resort to two backup plans when foot self-control wanted to anchor Vinogradov to a work boom and the new packaging for the science experiment could not be found.
"It's a lot like your house," said Paul Boehm, who oversaw the development of the spacewalk for NASA. "You set your car keys down somewhere and hopefully you find them when you're ready to go somewhere."
The U.S. space agency tries to keep path of the thousands of items aboard the station with a mechanized bar-code system. But sometimes crew members move things and do not put them rear in the same place, said Kirk Shire man, deputy manager of the space station program.
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@ 2:15 AM
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