Spacewalkers Finish Up Early
By Frank Morring, Jr. 
International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yuri Lonchakov needed only four hours and 49 minutes to complete a spacewalk on the Russian side of the station March 10 that was budgeted to take five hours and 45 minutes.
"We could have taken more photos," Lonchakov said as he and Fincke prepared to close the hatch on the station's Pirs docking compartment.
Photography took up most of the extravehicular activity (EVA), as the two spacewalkers used digital cameras to document handrails, vents, antennas, radiator panels and other hardware outside Russia's Zvezda service module and Zarya cargo block, which was the first station component to reach orbit. Russia engineers will use the photos to gauge the condition of the station exterior and plan any needed maintenance and repairs.
The pair also reinstalled a European space exposure experiment that didn't work after it was emplaced in December because of a wiring error inside Zvezda. The experiment - Expose-R - produced good telemetry after it was reset during the latest EVA. They also cut down some loose straps that might have blocked a docking target on the Pirs compartment.
The spacewalk was moved up in the station schedule in case additional delays in the upcoming launch of the space shuttle Discovery force mission managers to drop one or two of the four EVAs scheduled for the shuttle mission. In that case the outside work will be left to station astronauts in the "stage" after the shuttle leaves, and managers wanted to get ahead on the stage EVA work as much as possible.
Discovery is set to launch on the evening of March 11 with a new set of U.S.-built solar arrays for the ISS. It must get into orbit before March 16 to avoid conflicting with the Russian Soyuz vehicle that will deliver two members of the next ISS crew. Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt are set for a March 26 launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, along with two-time space tourist Charles Simonyi.
The shuttle is scheduled to carry the third member of Expedition 19 - Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata - to the station, and return Expedition 18 flight engineer Sandra Magnus to Earth. Magnus has been on the ISS since Nov. 16, 2008.
International Space Station photo: NASA
