Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) quickly completely a spacewalk to replace a faulty computer located on the outside of the orbiting outpost. This was one of the shortest spacewalks in the history of NASA.
On Wednesday 23 April, astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson left the relative safety of the space station and positioned themselves to replace the faulty equipment. A multiplexer-demultiplexer (MDM), acting as a backup to the primary system inside the vehicle, failed on 11 April. That equipment is nessesary to manage docking operations with other spacecraft.
"Swanson and Mastracchio installed a spare MDM that was housed inside the Destiny lab since April 2001 when it was delivered aboard space shuttle Endeavour," NASA officials wrote in a press release announcing completion of the spacewalk. The spacewalk lasted just over an hour-and-a-half, from 9:56 to 11:32 a.m., EDT.
The space station holds 45 MDM's aboard the craft. Of these, 24 are housed inside the vehicle, while 21 others are stored outside the ISS. The faulty device was part of a truss that was delivered to the ISS in April 2002.
On Easter Day, a Dragon Spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS, bringing 5,000 pounds of supplies and equipment to the six-man crew. Steve Swanson, a Colorado astronaut, opened the hatch to the resupply vessel just after 4 a.m. EDT.
Russian cosmonauts are studying new docking technology aboard the orbiting station. A Progress 53 resupply ship undocked from the Zvezda service module on Wednesday 23 April. This unmanned vehicle will be backed up 311 miles away from the station, and then redocked to the ISS using the Kurs automated rendevous system. That berthing is scheduled for the morning of Friday 25 April.
"Veteran station cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Tyurin started their morning on the ongoing Russian Bar experiment. That study researches tools and procedures to detect pressure leaks inside the space station," NASA officials wrote in a mission update.
Equipment for the Russian BAR experiments includes thermometers, an ultrasound analyzer, and leak detector.
In July 2013, Italian space traveler Luca Parmitano nearly drowned after his space suit leaked water into his helmet. The space agency declared it the most serious problem in the history of extra-vehicular activities. In December, Mastracchio was one of the astronauts forced to wear the same suit for an emergency repair in December 2013. The spacesuit wasn't the only potential scary thing aboard the station in recent years.
Spiders in Space may sound like the plot of a horror movie, but it is the name of a new, free, educational guide for educators, based on an experiment conducted on-board the ISS in 2011. Astronauts examined how spiders spin webs in micro-gravity, and found the arachnids adapted quite well to life in outer space.
