Spacewalkers make hand-over-hand crawl

NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Dan Tani now are moving hand-over-hand toward a work site near the starboard end of the International Space Station's central truss, hauling a spare solar wing motor drive along with them.

Whitson and Tani aim to remove a failed motor drive and then replace it with the spare. Here's a look at where the broken motor -- which is about the size of a beer keg and weighs more than 200 pounds -- is located, and the path the spacewalkers are taking to get there:

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The astronauts will spend the next hour setting up for the risky repair work. Whitson and Tani must take great care to avoid a significant shock hazard from motor, which serves as a electrical conduit to route power to station systems from its high-voltage solar arrays.

You can check out explicit warnings given to the astronauts on page 9 of this 32-page timeline that details step-by-step procedures for the spacewalk: Spacewalk Timeline.

And you can watch the action unfold here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the link below the image above to launch our NASA TV viewer and refresh this page for periodic updates.