Live In Orbit: Spacewalkers Encounter Trouble

Spacewalking astronauts ran in to trouble deploying an experiment platform outside the International Space Station and now are moving on to other higher-priority work.

Steve Swanson is heading toward the Japanese section of the station to perform some critical assembly work while Joe Acaba performs some inspection work. Crewmates inside the outpost are testing a newly installed distillation assembly for an important urine processing system.

Swanson and Acaba encountered problems trying to set up experiment platforms on the port side of the station's central truss.

The astronauts unbolted clamps and swung the one of two unpressurized platforms into place but were unable to put in place a supporting brace.

Swanson and Acaba were supposed to deploy experiment platforms on either side of the P3 segment of the station's central truss. They also were supposed to deploy similar payload attach systems on the S3 segment of the truss. Mission Control told the astronauts to move on to other work while engineers on the ground attempt to figure out a solution to the problem.

Swanson now is installing a GPS navigation antenna on the zenith side of the cylindrical module that tops the Japanese Kibo laboratory module. The navigation antenna is one of two that will help guide Japanese HTV space freighters as the unpiloted cargo carriers rendezvous and dock with the station. The HTV is scheduled to fly its inaugural mission to the station in September.

Acaba crawled back to the Quest airlock to retrieve cameras he needs to do a photographic survey of a damaged station radiator panel. The panel somehow was torn last year and engineers want to document its condition.

Inside the station, meanwhile, NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus and station skipper Mike Fincke tested a new distillation assembly in the U.S. urine processing system. The original distillation assembly, which was delivered along with the rest of the urine processing system, did not work properly and was returned to Earth for analysis. The replacement, which was installed Friday, was put through a dry run with water and no problems were encountered. The astronauts will attempt to run the processor with urine on Sunday.

NASA and its international partners would like to have the urine processing system up and operating when the size of resident crews is doubled to six in May.