Astronauts Struggle to Fold up Space Station's Solar Array

From PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news:

The crews of the Discovery and the International Space Station grappled with a solar array that refused to fully retract, raising the possibility of an unscheduled fourth spacewalk. For several tedious hours, astronauts painstakingly tried to fold up the six-year-old, 115-foot (35-meter) solar array on the ISS by remote control, but were unable to complete the job when the system jammed. A refolding of the old array, which was used to generate electricity for the orbiting space station, is necessary to allow the new solar array to rotate to track the sun. "A map never goes back to the way you bought it, it just doesn't," said John Curry, flight director for the space station. Kink that occurred in the port-side P6 solar array Astronauts on the space shuttle had three spacewalks scheduled during their 12-day mission that began Saturday. The first on Tuesday was used to attach a two-tonne truss segment on the ISS. The second and third spacewalks, on Thursday and Saturday, will be used to rewire the ISS so a solar array installed in September can be switched on to provide additional power to the station. NASA said a fourth spacewalk may be needed to manually fold the old array but that would not take place before the third scheduled spacewalk is over on Saturday.

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