Spacewalkers Finish Station Wing Hookups

Two spacewalking astronauts ventured outside Tuesday for the second time this week and completed electrical hookups for the international space station’s new power-producing solar wings.

They also provided flight controllers with up-close pictures of the right wing, which is too slack.

Perched 90 feet above space shuttle Endeavour, Carlos Noriega used small TV cameras mounted on his helmet to beam down pictures of loose tension cables on the right wing. The cables came off their pulleys when the wing was extended Sunday night, leaving the blanket of solar cells slack.

The problem could cause the fabric to tear or the wing to bend or break during shuttle dockings.

Mission Control agreed that Noriega and fellow spacewalker Joe Tanner could probably fix the cables during their third and final spacewalk on Thursday.

The left wing stretched out properly Monday night during a deliberately slow release and was perfectly taut.

The helmet cameras--dubbed “Carlos-cam” and “Joe-cam”--are a new spacewalk feature that came in handy evaluating the slack wing.

Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau, directing the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk from inside Endeavour, sounded like a film director as he told Noriega where to point his head.

“Look downward a bit. OK, now hold that for a bit and let the ground have a look. If you can, now pan up toward the tension bar, which is upward,” Garneau instructed.

Until Tuesday, the electricity generated by the solar wings was not flowing into space station Alpha. Noriega and Tanner hooked up power cables between the solar wings and the station, while station commander Bill Shepherd and his Russian crew attached cables on the inside to complete the circuit.

The solar wings, 240 feet from tip to tip and 38 feet wide, are capable of producing 65 kilowatts at peak power--four times more than Alpha was producing before.