Get Ahead Tasks for Spacewalkers


Two hours, 45 minutes into the spacewalk, Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy completed installing two video cameras on the Japanese Exposed Facility that will provide views to help with rendezvous and berthing of Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) later this year. Based on the amount of time needed to clean up after the spacewalk, Mission Control decided to defer the deployment of a Payload Attachment System on the Starboard 3 truss. Instead, the spacewalkers will undertake a few “get ahead tasks.”

The final full day of activities for the joint crew of Endeavour and the International Space Station will focus on the fifth and final spacewalk of the mission.

The crew was awakened by the song “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” performed by Steve Tyrell. The song was uplinked especially for Commander Mark Polansky.

Spacewalkers Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn, who spent the night camped out in the Quest airlock, are scheduled to begin their construction work at 7:28 a.m. The primary objective of the spacewalk is to install two cameras on Japan’s Kibo laboratory that will provide views to help with rendezvous and berthing of the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). The HTV is scheduled to make its first deliveries to the station in September.

The six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk also includes an electrical cable swap and adjustment of insulation blankets on the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. If time permits, the pair also will deploy a Payload Attachment System on the Starboard 3 truss structure that will allow an external spare parts stowage platform to be installed on a future shuttle mission.

Inside the complex, Polansky and Mission Specialist Dave Wolf will support the spacewalkers, and Pilot Doug Hurley will continue cargo transfers, which are more than 80 percent complete.

Expedition 20 Flight Engineers Mike Barratt and Tim Kopra will work on several scientific experiments, and departing station crew member Koichi Wakata will continue handovers with Kopra, the newest station crew member. Flight engineer Bob Thirsk will install brackets that will allow the new C.O.L.B.E.R.T., or the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, to be set up in the station’s Harmony module when it is delivered on the STS-128 shuttle mission.

The station crew is scheduled to begin its sleep period at 5:33 p.m. followed 30 minutes later by the shuttle crew.

The next shuttle status report will be issued at the conclusion of the spacewalk, or earlier if warranted.