Скачать или смотреть ISS astronauts begin space walk to repair shuttle's thermal blanket

(16 Jun 2007)
Houston
1. Wide of NASA officials in news conference
Space
2. International Space Station (ISS)
Houston
3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Mike Suffredini, ISS Programme Manger:
"I think we're in good shape. We've still got a lot of options to go work through to recover these machines."
Space
4. Inside ISS
5. Astronauts making preparations
Houston
6. Various diagrams showing repairs to be made
7. Wide of control centre
8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Mike Suffredini, ISS Programme Manager:
"The first thing we're going to do is figure out how to recover these computers. And the next thing we're going to do, we're going to ignore whether or not we can recover the computers and figure out how to take care of our attitude once the shuttle departs."
Space
9. Wide exterior of space station
STORYLINE:
A US space agency official rejected suggestions on Friday that the international space station might have to be abandoned at some point if a failed computer system operated by NASA's Russian partners could not be restored.
"I think we're in good shape. We've still got a lot of options to go work through to recover these machines," Mike Suffredini, the International Space Station Programme Manager said at a news conference in Houston.
"The first thing we're going to do is figure out how to recover these computers. And the next thing we're going to do is we're going to ignore whether or not we can recover the computers and figure out how to take care of our attitude once the shuttle departs," he added.
In the past, NASA and Russia have talked about operating the space station without people.
If astronauts did have to leave, they'd be able to come back safely, Suffredini said.
He said there was no urgency now that would require the crew of the outpost, which orbits about 200 miles (322 kilometres) above Earth, to come
home.
Meanwhile, two astronauts from the space shuttle Atlantis, which arrived one week ago to continue construction work on the space station, began a
spacewalk with two assignments.
The first is to disconnect a connector on a newly installed power-conducting truss that is a key suspect in the computer glitch and also to repair a torn thermal blanket that helps protect the shuttle from heat on its return flight to Earth next week.
NASA suspects the connector because the Russian computers blinked out at about the same time the connector went on line.
Atlantis launched 8 June, carrying seven astronauts to the space station to continue work on the long-running project, scheduled for completion in 2010.
But plans for the 11-day mission were first disrupted by discovery of a rip in the thermal blanket, a problem that has extended the mission by two days so that a repair spacewalk could be worked into the mission.
The computer breakdown added to the work assignment for the two spacewalkers, James Reilly and Danny Olivas.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...