Live in orbit: Spacewalk by the numbers

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The first of five spacewalks planned during shuttle Discovery's stay at the International Space Station now is in the history books.

Discovery mission specialists Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock switched their spacesuits off of battery power at 12:16 p.m. EDT, officially marking the end of a six-hour, 14-minute foray outside the frontier outpost.

The excursion was the 93rd to be carried out since the first two station building blocks were linked in late 1998. Spacewalkers have spent 575 hours and 14 minutes assembling or maintaining the station.

Sixty-five of the spacewalks have been staged from either the U.S. Quest airlock or the Russian Pirs docking compartment, which doubles as an airlock. The remainder have been staged from the airlocks of visiting shuttle orbiters.

It was the fourth spacewalk for veteran astronaut Parazynski, who now has tallied 26 hours and five minutes working in the vacuum. It was the first spacewalk for Wheelock.

Parazynski and Wheelock retrieved a broken radio communications antenna and stowed it in Discovery's cargo bay for a return to Earth. They prepped the U.S. Harmony module to be hoisted out of the shuttle's cargo bay and installed on the side of the U.S. Unity module. And they began preparations to relocate the P6 solar array truss.

Said Parazynski: "Good day in outer space."

The second and third spacewalks -- which primarily are aimed at moving the P6 truss -- are scheduled for Sunday and Tuesday. A new heat-shield tile repair technique will be tested during a spacewalk next Thursday, and the last spacewalk will be performed next Friday.

The quintet will be the greatest number of spacewalks carried out on an ISS assembly mission. It will equal the number of spacewalks carried out on Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions in 1993, 1997 and 2002.

Live round-the-clock coverage of NASA's 120th shuttle mission is continuing here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the image above or below the Live NASA TV webcast headline to launch our NASA TV viewer.

The Flight Day 4 Mission Status Briefing is scheduled to take place at 2:15 p.m. EDT. The news briefing scheduled for 5 p.m. following the daily Mission Management Team meeting has been cancelled because the team is working no significant issues.