Space Station Power Failure Strands Astronaut on Robotic Arm

(News Today) - The last thing you want when perched on the end of a robotic arm suspended from a space station is a power failure. But this was the situation that faced Atlantis shuttle specialist Garrett Reisman yesterday afternoon.

The 42-year-old astronaut was two hours into a seven-hour spacewalk when the orbiter suffered a partial power outage 250 miles above Earth. The station's main command and control computer crashed and although a backup computer kicked in the video monitors being used to control the robotic arm went offline.

Mr Reisman and Piers Sellers who was controlling the 58ft arm, were told to sit tight by ground control. Fellow spacewalker Stephen Bowen, who had been working with connectors on the orbiter's framework, also stopped working.

Thankfully Nasa got the systems back up and running half an hour later. 'Ah, much better,' a somewhat relieved Mr Sellers said when his camera views came back.

Nasa said neither spacewalker was ever in any danger.

The adventurous pair continued for another five hours, fixing a six foot dish antenna onto the space station.

Mr Bowen proudly shook the 14ft structure. 'It doesn't wobble anywhere,' he said.

The astronauts next hooked up a storage platform for the station's Canadian-built robot, named Dextre, and loosened the bolts on six batteries that will be replaced on the next two spacewalks. They jokingly asked for more work as the spacewalk went into an hour of overtime.

'You guys might not be tired, but I'm done,' said Dominic "Tony" Antonelli, who monitored everything from inside.

Mr Reisman spent the entire spacewalk on the end of the robot arm and clearly enjoyed the ride.

'I'm way the heck up here now,' he called out from his perch.

'I might only be about 5ft4", but right now, I think I'm the highest person around. Woooo!'

Shuttle Atlantis and its crew of six delivered the antenna and other spare parts to the space station on Sunday.

Nasa wants to stockpile as much equipment at the orbiting complex as possible before the shuttle program ends. It is the last journey for the space shuttle Atlantis.

Source : kompas.com

Posted in: