Spacewalkers Suit Up For 1st Excursion

Discovery astronauts Stephen Bowen and Al Drew are suiting up in the U.S. Quest airlock at the International Space Station, gearing up for some assembly and maintenance work outside the outpost.

The two are being assisted by Discovery mission specialist Michael Barratt and Italian astronaut Paulo Nespoli, a European Space Agency flight engineer on the station.

Bowen and Drew are scheduled to exit the airlock around 11:18 a.m. for a 6.5-hour excursion. You can watch the action live here in The Flame Trench. Click the NASA TV box on the right to launch our NASA TV viewer and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.

Bowen is wearing a suit with a red stripe and will be answering to the radio call sign "EV-1." Drew is wearing an all-white suit and will be "EV-2."

The outing will be the sixth spacewalk for Boeing and the first for Drew.