Spacewalkers Dave Williams and Clay Anderson are moving on to the final chore of an excursion that's being abbreviate so Endeavour's astronauts can prepare for a potential early departure from the International Space Station.
Working outside the U.S. Destiny laboratory, Williams and Anderson aim to install an antenna for a system designed to gauge the amount of stress that the station's central truss is subjected to over time.
The External Wireless Instrumentation System antenna will route data from six accelerometers on a portside truss segment (P4) to a computer on the inside of the U.S. lab. The computer is the unit that was sabotaged and then repaired prior to the Aug. 8 launch of Endeavour.
The work is expected to take about an hour and 40 minutes.
Hurricane Dean continues to churn through the Caribbean and now is a Category 4 storm packing sustained winds of 150 mph. The Associated Press reports that shelters are being opened throughout Jamaica and Cuba declared a "state of alert" while two island nations prone to devastating floods -- Haiti and the Dominican Republic -- prepared for up to five inches of rain.
The storm is expected to strengthen to a Category 5 hurricane before it makes landfall in northeastern Mexico next Thursday. Click to enlarge the 11 a.m. update from the National Hurricane Center in Miami:
.NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge the NASA TV screen grab (top) that shows station flight engineer Clay Anderson (left) and Endeavour mission specialist Dave Williams (right) rigging up a wireless antenna system outside the U.S. Destiny laboratory at the International Space Station. You can also click to enlarge the National Hurricane Center 11 a.m. update on Hurricane Dean.
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