A spacewalking astronaut is hauling a space communications antenna toward a stowage platform outside the International Space Station as an outfitting excursion continues outside the outpost.
Riding on the end of the station's 57-foot robot arm, Endeavour mission specialist Dave Wolf is moving the huge antenna from a shuttle-launched carrier to an external stowage platform on the port side of the station's central truss.
"Up and away," Canadian Space Agency robot arm operator Julie Payette said as he started to guide Wolf and the antenna away from the Integrated Cargo Carrier, which is temporarily mounted to the top of the station's Mobile Transporter rail cart.
Crewmate Tom Marshburn, meanwhile, is preparing a cooling system pump for a move a little later in their spacewalking work day.
Equipped with a six-foot dish, the 194-pound antenna provides Ku-band communications between the station and NASA relay satellites in an orbit some 22,300 miles above Earth. The high-data rate antenna beams video to the ground as well as telephone calls, e-mail and payload data.
The station's prime U.S. space-to-ground communications antenna is mounted on top of the station's Z-1 truss, which was launched in the late 1990s. A second antenna eventually will be mounted there and kept in a standby mode.
The antenna being to be stowed by Wolf will serve as a back-up to the prime and standby antennas.
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