Shuttle Crew Begins Space Station Repairs

Two spacewalking astronauts fixed broken equipment Sunday night on the outside of the International Space Station, flying united with the shuttle Atlantis.

It was the shuttle crew’s second 200-mile-high feat of the day. The first was the impeccable shuttle-station linkup.

Eager to get started on the six hours’ worth of exterior repairs, Jeffrey Williams and James Voss emerged from Atlantis a little early. The space station, anchored in the shuttle cargo bay, towered above them.

“Look at that space station,” Voss said in awe.

The men quickly made their way to a loose crane that needed to be secured.

The 5-foot construction crane was installed on the space station by another pair of spacewalkers last spring. But it was never locked properly into its socket, allowing it to swivel back and forth.

Williams and Voss removed the crane from its socket, then pushed it back in tight with a twist. They tugged at it, and it was no longer wobbling. “All right!” they shouted.

Williams and Voss also had to finish assembling a much larger Russian crane and replace a failed antenna. The initial pieces of this crane, 50 feet when fully extended, were installed by last year’s spacewalkers.

The cranes will be used by future crews to move large items around the outside of the orbiting complex, which NASA hopes will eventually extend the length of a football field and top 460 tons.

For now, the space station jutting out of the shuttle cargo bay is 77 feet long and a modest 35 tons. Construction is on hold until the Russians launch their long-delayed service module; liftoff is targeted for July.

The hatches will remain sealed between Atlantis and the space station until tonight. Once they’re opened, the astronauts will begin replacing dying batteries on the Russian side of the station, which was launched in November 1998.