Live in Orbit: Experiments retrieved from Columbus

Update, 11:33 p.m.: With their scheduled tasks complete, the spacewalkers are moving on to some "get ahead" tasks, including attaching a protective thermal cover to a camera on the station's robotic arm and inspecting a heater cable. The camera cover offers protection from an inadvertant jet plume from the Japanese HTV cargo spacecraft, which is scheduled to make its debut flight later this month and be grabbed by the arm for docking.

After about five hours of work, spacewalkers Danny Olivas and Nicole are working on their final task.

They have removed two materials experiments in suitcase-like boxes from the end of the International Space Station's European Columbus laboratory module (shown at left).

Earlier they removed another set of microgravity experiments from another location on the lab and fastened it to a palette in the rear Discovery's payload bay.

The removal plan was adjusted when NASA's Mission Control Center lost contact with the spacewalkers for 33 minutes.

A storm over Guam knocked out a relay between a satellite and and NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, which routes data to Houston.

Olivas and Stott took advantage of the quiet time to take a series of planned photographs instead of unhooking the science experiments.

Once that was done, they initially struggled to bolt the European Technology Exposure Facility, or EuTEF, to the payload bay. They succeeded after turning it around to change its alignment.

Actually a collection of nine experiments, EuTEF was delivered to the station with the Columbus module in February 2008.

The second batch of experiments is called the Materials International Space Station Experiment, or MISSE. The NASA experiments were installed in March 2008 and will be fastened to carriers on the port side of the shuttle payload bay.

Stott is working from the end of the station robotic arm that is also holding the large ammonia tank assembly that the spacewalkers removed at the start of their excursion.

The duo is running on schedule and should be back inside the Quest airlock around midnight Eastern time.