Astronauts Gear Up for Third Spacewalk

From Yahoo! News: Science News:

Two spacewalking astronauts are gearing up for round two against a jammed cargo platform outside the International Space Station that thwarted attempts to fold into place in an earlier excursion. Discovery shuttle astronauts Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II, both schoolteachers-turned-spaceflyers, are due to float outside the space station on their mission's last spacewalk at 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 GMT) to tie up the loose ends on the stuck platform among other tasks. Acaba and fellow astronaut Steven Swanson left the portside cargo platform, which will serve as one of several spare parts depots for the station, in limbo - half-stowed, half-deployed - after it jammed during a Saturday spacewalk. The glitch delayed their orbital work and left some of their chores incomplete. Kwatsi Alibaruho, lead space station flight director for Discovery's flight, said late Sunday that a restraint pin the spacewalkers accidentally installed in the wrong position in that spacewalk now does not appear to be the source of the trouble. A catch that must be released for the swing-out cargo platform to rotate into place appears to be stiffer than expected, and may just need a little more elbow grease to move. "The fix for it may be as simple as simply pulling on in harder," Alibaruho told reporters late Sunday from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "But this is only a theory. We won't really know until we get the spacewalker at the site." Alibaruho said spacewalkers are trained not to pull on any rotating mechanisms on the space station too hard to avoid damage. In a televised interview on Sunday, Swanson confirmed that he didn't tug too much on the device and is hopeful his crewmates will be able to force it into place.

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