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The joined crews of shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station are wrapping up a highly successful day in space, one in which they made great strides toward doubling the size of outpost crews next May.
Nine astronauts and a cosmonaut working 220 miles above the planet finally got a new urine recycling system to work, converting "yesterday's coffee into today's coffee," shuttle skipper Chris Ferguson said.
The processing assembly finally began operating as intended, turning urine, sweat and condensate into potable water after three false starts and two orbital fix-it attempts.
The news got even better when the station's starboard solar wing made two full revolutions without trouble -- a sign that spacewalking repairs to a giant rotary mechanism worked as intended.
"We're well on our way in both of these cases," NASA station program manager Mike Suffredini said.
Endeavour blasted off Nov. 14 on a mission to outfit the station for crews of six and repair the faulty solar wing rotary mechanism. The device had not been operating properly since September 2007, limiting the amount of power that could be produced on the station.
The astronauts delivered extra crew quarters, a toilet, a kitchen galley and parts of a $250 million life support system designed to recycle wastewater and generate oxygen, greatly reducing the amount of supplies that have to be space-trucked to the station.
Three more months of testing will be required before water from the system is blessed for human consumption. But NASA officials expect the system will be put into service without delay.
"It's better than what you get out of the tap," said Suffredini. "It's very purified."
A two-orbit test of a 10-foot-diameter rotary mechanism on the starboard side of the station's central truss showed four spacewalks aimed at fixing the faulty device paid off.
The giant, saw-toothed gear slowly turned a set of solar wings like a giant steamboat paddlewheel as the outpost circled Earth. Doing so enabled the wings to stay optimally pointed at the sun, maximizing electrical output.
Internal damage caused by inadequate lubricant forced NASA to keep the wings - which stretch 240 feet from tip to tip - in stationary positions, limiting the production of electricity.
Three of Endeavour's astronauts cleaned and lubricated the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint during the spacewalks. They also replaced 11 of 12 trundle bearing assemblies situated around the circumference of the device. The other already had been swapped out.
More testing will be required before the wings are put back into full-time rotation. But preliminary data from Tuesday's test looked good.
Plans to build and launch a spare rotary joint and then install it on 10 difficult spacewalks might be scrapped if tests show an annual lube job will keep the mechanism operating properly over the long haul, Suffredini said.
Endeavour is scheduled to depart the station Friday and land back at Kennedy Space Center at 1:18 p.m. Sunday.
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