Two astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station Wednesday on the last spacewalk of their mission, this time to perform some leftover maintenance work.
Discovery shuttle astronauts Steve Bowen and Alvin Drew are slated to don their bulky NASA-issue spacesuits and float outside of the station's Quest airlock at 10:18 a.m. EST (1518 GMT). It's the second and final spacewalk of the mission – Discovery's last spaceflight before being retired.
To distinguish themselves for NASA cameras, Bowen will wear a spacesuit with red stripes while Drew will wear a solid white spacesuit. The excursion is expected to last approximately 6 1/2 hours.
Bowen and Drew successfully completed their mission's first spacewalk on Monday (Feb. 28) to install a power extension cable and move a faulty cooling pump module from a temporary attachment bracket to a storage platform on the station's exterior.
For today's outing, one of the major tasks will be to vent about 10 pounds of residual ammonia from inside the defunct cooling pump. The ammonia pump broke down in the summer, and was replaced during a series of emergency spacewalks conducted by two space station astronauts during a previous spacewalk. [Inside and Out: The International Space Station] Read more...
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