Blogger Note: You can watch live coverage of the spacewalk here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the image above to launch our NASA TV viewer and round-the-clock coverage of NASA's 120th shuttle flight, the 23rd devoted to assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station.
An ambitious bid to triple the size of the International Space Station by April will hit a major snag today if spacewalking astronauts can't make risky repairs to a damaged outpost solar wing.
The Dec. 6 launch of the European Columbus laboratory almost certainly would be delayed until 2008. The delivery early next year of the first two sections of the Japanese Kibo research facility likely would be pushed back.
NASA's ability to complete station construction and retire its aging shuttle fleet by a deadline in September 2010 would be threatened. But the agency is confident the astronauts can pull off the unprecedented.
"It's not rocket science," NASA spacewalk officer Dina Contella said.
"I expect it will be a quick fix," NASA station flight director Derek Hassmann added.
The job undoubtedly will be dangerous: There's a chance spacewalker Scott Parazynski could be shocked or electrocuted by the high-voltage array.
There will be a high degree of difficulty, too.
Parazynski will be anchored to the end of a makeshift scaffold - a shuttle heat-shield inspection boom attached to the station's robot arm.
Crane operating crewmates will not be able to eyeball the spacewalker from inside the U.S. Destiny lab. They'll rely on camera views and verbal cues from spacewalker Douglas Wheelock, who will be at the base of the 10-story solar array.
High drama also is a real possibility.
The solar wing surgery will take place half a football field away from safety inside the U.S. Quest airlock -- further than any astronaut has ventured during a decade of station construction.
It would take at least a half-hour to scramble back in an emergency and NASA spacesuits are only equipped with 30 minutes of emergency breathing air.
The astronauts nonetheless are ready to give it a try. "They're ready to go do what we're going to ask them to do," Hassmann said.
Parazynski and Wheelock will head outside Quest at 6:28 a.m. EDT.
With his boots anchored at the end of the boom, Parazynski will be hoisted nine stories. Then he'll try to stitch up a ripped section of the array -- an attempt to restore full structural integrity to the solar wing.
The astronauts scavenged stuff on the station and fashioned lengthy strands of insulated wire with tabs that toggle like the backing of cuff links.
Parazynski will string the wire strands through existing, reinforced holes that are spaced evenly across the 15-foot width of the torn panel. He'll cut a snagged guide-wire and flip the tabs to secure the strands to the panel.
Hassmann thinks the work will be a cinch.
"All we need to do is give him a suite of tools, get him to the work site and I have hope that it's going to be a quick and easy fix once we get him there," he said.
Otherwise, the December delivery of the Columbus lab and the $100 billion station construction project will face significant delay.
Said Hassmann: "We need to get the solar array addressed and fixed, fully deployed, structurally stable and available for power before we would proceed."
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