Two American spacewalkers are venturing outside the International Space Station on an excursion aimed at outfitting the outpost with a number of large spare parts.
With NASA's space shuttle fleet set to retire in late 2010, the U.S. space agency will be hauling up as many large spares as possible during eight remaining outpost assembly and outfitting missions.
A extra space-to-ground communications antenna, an ammonia pump assembly and a replacement for a drive system for the station's Mobile Transporter rail cart are among the spare that the astronauts aim to deploy today.
Astronauts Dave Wolf and Tom Marshburn switched their spacesuits to battery power at 11:27 a.m. as the joined shuttle and station flew 220 miles above central Asia. The spacecraft were passing from the sun-lit to the dark side of the planet at the time.
The astronauts had been running about a half-hour ahead of schedule, but now they are back on the nominal timeline for the day.
Wolf, the lead spacewalker on the Endeavour crew, is making his sixth career excursion. He is wearing the spacesuit with solid red stripes and is answering to the radio call sign "EV-1."
Marshburn is making his first spacewalk. He is "EV-3" and is wearing the spacesuit with broken red and white stripes.
The spacewalkers will retrieve the spares from an itegrated cargo carrier that has been temporarily stowed atop the station's Mobile Transporter rail cart and will move them to an external stowage platform on the port side of the outpost's central truss.
The spacewalk is the 127th carried out in the assembly and maintenance of the station since its first two building blocks were linked in low Earth orbit in late 1998.
Station skipper Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Frank De Winne, meanwhile, are attempting to repair one of two toilets on the station. Mission managers think the commode can be fixed in relatively short order.
The shuttle toilet also is available.
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