Astronauts exit space station for rewiring job
A veteran spacewalker and his rookie partner slipped outside the International Space Station on Saturday to complete a power rewiring job that should leave the outpost ready for the long-delayed addition of European and Japanese laboratories.
The spacewalk, which began at 11:25 p.m. PST was to be the third and final outing of space shuttle Discovery’s 12-day flight. NASA managers, however, were toying with the idea of a fourth spacewalk to fix a jammed solar wing panel that had to be folded up to make room for the station’s new wings to rotate. After dozens of attempts to automatically fold up the 110-foot-long panel, flight directors gave up with the wing still about halfway out. The panel must be completely folded into a storage box so it can be relocated to another part of the station next year.
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