Two astronauts from the US shuttle Endeavour have successfully completed the first of five scheduled space walks aimed at completing a Japanese laboratory at the International Space Station, NASA said.
Tim Kopra, who made his first space walk, and Dave Wolf, who has carried out four space walks, returned to the ISS’s decompression chamber and closed the airlock at 10.51pm last night, 37 minutes ahead of schedule, NASA said.
The space walk lasted five hours and 32 minutes.
'The third and final piece of Japan's Kibo laboratory was assembled on orbit Saturday, a symphony of robotic and spacewalking performances by the 13-member orchestra aboard the International Space Station complex,' NASA said in a statement.
The 1.9-tonne unit known as the Japanese Exposed Facility will serve ‘as a type of porch for experiments that require direct exposure to space,’ NASA said.
From inside the ISS, astronauts Koichi Wakata and Doug Hurley used the station's Canadarm2 to grasp the Facility and lift it out of the Endeavour payload bay.
‘They handed the facility to the shuttle's Canadarm and moved the station's arm into position for installation. The shuttle arm handed off the new Kibo component to the station arm, and then the station arm was used to move the new 'porch' into position for installation to the Kibo pressurized module,’ NASA said.
Earlier, on their first full day in space, the Endeavour crew of six Americans and one Canadian tested equipment, installed a camera for the orbiter docking system and extended the docking ring that sits on top of the system.
The shuttle successfully docked at the space station Friday amid questions about the integrity of the shuttle's heat shield tiles.
However NASA said that a close analysis of pictures of Endeavour's heat shield confirmed the absence of any damage.
