The second spacewalk of the space shuttle Discovery鈥檚 mission went so smoothly it finished an hour ahead of schedule on Thursday, lasting just five hours.
During their foray, which ended at 1941 EST (0041 GMT on Friday), spacewalkers Bob Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang successfully rewired the International Space Station (ISS) in preparation for future expansion.
But NASA had prepared for a multitude of possible glitches, since half of the station鈥檚 power had to be shut down during the spacewalk. That meant that half of the outpost鈥檚 lights had to be turned off, and that the astronauts had to hook up jumper cables to keep critical systems and their back-ups running (see ISS power reduced during second spacewalk).
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The agency had coached the astronauts and ground controllers on what to do in case the power boxes did not to come back on after they were rewired, and in the event that a coolant pump did not to start up. But the spacewalk went without a hitch, to everyone鈥檚 relief.
鈥淏illy O. and the crew and everyone onboard, I鈥檇 like to let you know the pump module power-up has gone just great,鈥� Steve Robinson in Mission Control radioed to pilot Bill Oefelein, who was coordinating the spacewalks from inside the station. 鈥淵ou will not be doing an R&R of a pump module today.鈥�
Light show
In addition to reconfiguring the station鈥檚 power and thermal systems, Curbeam and Fuglesang moved two carts on the station鈥檚 backbone-like truss.
About six hours before the spacewalk, a stream of charged particles that had been hurled from the Sun in a so-called coronal mass ejection slammed into the Earth. This led to auroras, and Fuglesang and Curbeam spared a few moments to marvel at the brilliant aurora borealis, or northern lights, from above.
鈥淚t鈥檚 different when you look down at them instead of up at them,鈥� Oefelein told the spacewalkers from inside the ISS.
鈥淣o, I don鈥檛 see many in Stockholm,鈥� said Fuglesang, who is the first Swede to travel to space.
鈥淕osh, they鈥檙e beautiful,鈥� Curbeam said.
Moments later, Curbeam said he saw a shooting star beneath Fuglesang. The Geminid meteor shower peaked on Thursday (see Peak of Geminid meteor shower set to dazzle).
Learn more in our continuously updated special report on the space shuttle.
