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BookmarkScienceDaily (July 23, 2007) — Two International Space Station crew members have begun a spacewalk that includes removal and jettison of a refrigerator-size ammonia reservoir.
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The scheduled 6½-hour spacewalk from the Quest Airlock began at 6:24 a.m. EDT Monday.
Astronaut Clay Anderson is the lead spacewalker, EV1, wearing the spacesuit with red stripes. Fyodor Yurchikhin, the cosmonaut and station commander, wearing the all-white suit, is EV2. Cosmonaut Oleg Kotov is in the U.S. laboratory Destiny to operate the Canadarm2.
After leaving the airlock and setting up equipment, the first task is installation of a television camera stanchion. The spacewalkers will take it from an external stowage platform and then install it on the Earth-facing side of the station's main truss at the interface Starboard 0-Port 1 (S0-P1) truss segments.
Next they will move to separate tasks. Anderson will reconfigure a power supply for an S-Band Antenna Assembly, and then set up and get on a foot restraint at the end of Canadarm2. Yurchikhin will replace a circuit breaker, called a remote power controller module. It will ensure power redundancy for a move of the Mobile Transporter rail car on the station's truss.
Back together, Anderson and Yurchikhin will remove flight support equipment, where the camera stanchion had been mounted, and an attached Flight Releasable Attachment Mechanism. Together they have a mass of about 212 pounds.
While Anderson jettisons them from the end of the arm, Yurchikhin will move to the Z1 truss, where he will disconnect and stow cabling associated with the ammonia reservoir, called the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS).
The EAS was installed on the P6 truss during STS-105 in August 2001, as an ammonia reservoir if a leak had occurred. It was never used, and was no longer needed after the permanent cooling system was activated last December. The EAS has to be removed before the P6 truss can be moved to the end of the station's main truss.
