Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt completed an internal spacewalk Wednesday at 3:07 a.m. EDT.
Image above: Expedition 20 Flight Engineer Robert Thirsk works in the Columbus laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
Padalka and Barratt replaced a cover on Zvezda’s zenith docking port with a docking cone. The excursion took place internally with the spacewalkers attached to umbilicals in Zvezda for life support. It lasted about 12 minutes.
The excursion was the shortest of the 125 spacewalks in support of station assembly and maintenance. It was conducted eight years and two days after Jim Voss and Yury Usachev of Expedition Two conducted a similar internal spacewalk in 2001 to position the same docking cone to the nadir port of the Zvezda transfer compartment in advance of the arrival of the Pirs Docking Compartment.
Docking antennas, a docking target and electrical connectors were installed on the exterior of the Zvezda service module when Padalka and Barratt completed their first Expedition 20 spacewalk Friday.
The station is now ready for the docking of the Mini-Research Module 2, or MRM2, later this year. The MRM2 will dock automatically to the zenith port of Zvezda and will serve as an additional docking port for Russian vehicles.
After reconfiguring the station for normal operations, the crew began an extended sleep period around 8:20 a.m. A wake up time of 2 a.m. Thursday will set in motion preparations for the arrival of the STS-127 crew early next week for 11 days of joint docked operations.
Endeavour and the STS-127 crew are scheduled to launch to the station Saturday, June 13, bringing with them the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section. They will also bring astronaut Timothy Kopra, who will take Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata’s place aboard the orbital outpost.
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