Another day, another spacewalk. For the last month it seems like astronauts on board the International Space Station have spent more days outside than inside.
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Atlantis Moves Out to the Launch Pad
The space shuttle Atlantis made its journey out to the launch pad on Thursday, perched atop the slow-moving crawler transporter. If everything goes well, Atlantis will blast off on March 15, beginning an 11-day visit to the International Space Station to install a new truss segment.
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NASA Astronaut Charged With Attempted Murder
As you’ve probably heard by now, NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak was arrested this week, and charged with attempted kidnapping. Nowak, who flew on board the space shuttle Atlantis just last July, was captured by police when she attempted to confront rival Colleen Shipman over the affections of a third astronaut: Bill Oefelein. Nowak was found with a variety of weapons on her and in her car.
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Sunita Williams Sets Women’s Spacewalking Record
Astronauts Mike Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams spent another day in space on Sunday, continuing the process of switching over the International Space Station’s power and cooling systems. Spacewalks are pretty important in themselves, but during the journey outside, Williams broke the record for the most time spent spacewalking by a woman.
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Spacewalkers Begin Switching Over the Station’s Cooling System
Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Sunita Williams spent nearly 8 hours outside on the International Space Station on Wednesday, beginning the process of reconfiguring the station’s power and cooling systems.
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Discovery Pulls Away from the Station
After 8 days docked together, and 4 spacewalks, the astronauts on board the International Space Station and the space shuttle Discovery big farewell to one another and closed the hatch. Discovery then detached from the station and drifted slowly away. Astronauts on board captured a series of photographs of the station as they pulled away.
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Astronauts Fold Up a Solar Panel on the Final Spacewalk
On their fourth and final trip outside the International Space Station, US astronaut Robert Curbeam and Sweden’s Christer Fuglesang convinced a misbehaving solar panel to fold up nicely. The team suited up and began their spacewalk on Monday at 1910 GMT (2:10 pm EST). Working with the panel was hard, slow work, eventually requiring about five hours of poking panels and shaking the storage box to get the stuck sections to fold up properly. With the solar panel safely folded away, the station’s new panels are free to rotate to face the Sun and generate the maximum amount of electricity.
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Astronauts Working to Fold Arrays
Mission Specialists Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang have gone back outside the International Space Station to try and get its troublesome solar arrays to retract properly. Imagine a big fold out map, that’s supposed to go back on exactly the same folds. It’s not folding back up again, and nothing they tried from inside fixed it. Time to do this hands on.
Curbeam and Fuglesang stepped out around 2pm EST, and they should get back in around 8:25 pm EST, after more than six hours in space.
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Jules Verne Spends 21 Days in Space, Here on Earth
ESA’s new Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, has recently spent 21 days in a chamber that simulated the cold, radiation and vacuum of space. And it passed with flying colours. The 20-tonne spacecraft will eventually be attached to the top of an Ariane 5 rocket in the summer of 2007, and flown to the International Space Station. A whole fleet of these spacecraft will eventually be built, transferring replacement cargo to the station, and then serving as disposable garbage cans, burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Station’s Solar Panels Retracted Halfway
Shuttle astronauts spent a frustrating day today, trying to get the International Space Station’s solar wings retracted. NASA was hoping to retract the wings fully to allow new permanent solar panels to rotate to face the Sun and begin generating electricity. Astronauts did get the wings partially retracted; far enough to allow the larger wings to rotate, so NASA is considering the day a success. A spacewalk might be scheduled later in the week, for astronauts to manually assist folding the array.
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