Space station crew steps out for repairs

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A spacewalk on the International Space Station was extended Thursday night so that the two crew members could replace a video camera on a construction platform at the orbiting outpost.

The task was the last of the spacewalk for Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. flight engineer Jeff Williams, who successfully completed their other maintenance jobs. They got behind schedule, though, and the camera chore was still unfinished when the decision was made to extend the spacewalk for less than an hour.

NASA controllers, before giving the go-ahead, conferred with their Russian counterparts about whether the crew’s Russian spacesuits were able to support them for as long as 6 1/2 hours in space. The longest spacewalk of eight hours and 56 minutes was performed in 2001.

“OK. We’re going out,” said Vinogradov as he and Williams exited the Russian side of the station 220 miles above the Earth.

Vinogradov attached himself to the end of a boom which can extend to 50 feet and Williams maneuvered him to an area on the station where the Russian commander successfully installed a new vent for a broken oxygen-generation system.

“My feet are like ice,” Williams joked in Russian when asked if he was cold. A Russian flight controller responded, “We need to put brandy into the system instead of water.”

Vinogradov and Williams also repositioned a cable interfering with the signal of a navigation antenna, photographed another antenna that may be preventing a reboost engine from working properly, and retrieved a thruster residue collection plate, a contamination monitoring device and biology experiments.

The maintenance tasks left little time for publicity stunts. Plans were scratched for Vinogradov to whack a golf ball into orbit for the longest drive in history. A Canadian golf club manufacturer paid Russia’s space agency an undisclosed amount to have Vinogradov hit the gold-plated golf ball into space, but the stunt was postponed until later in the year.

A few items needed for the spacewalk got lost somewhere inside the cluttered space station. Among them: part of a Russian foot restraint for holding Vinogradov in place at the end of the 55-foot boom. He used a U.S.-made tether instead.