Cape Canaveral: US astronaut Sunita Williams has now spent more time walking in space than any other woman, setting the record as she and a crew mate upgraded the international space station’s cooling system.
Williams broke the previous record of more than 21 hours on Sunday when she and Michael Lopez-Alegria completed the second of what could be a precedent-setting three spacewalks in nine days. The new record for women is 22 hours and 27 minutes.
During Sunday’s spacewalk, which lasted more than seven hours, small amounts of toxic ammonia leaked from a fluid line. The liquid ammonia, which freezes into flakes when it hits the vacuum of space, did not ap- pear to touch either astronaut. Mission Control told them to continue their task of hooking up ammonia fluid lines from a temporary cooling system to a permanent one.
Ammonia could cause respiratory problems for the three-person crew if enough of it got into the space station. Once they were back in the space station’s airlock, Mission Control made the astronauts test for contamination. The test was negative.
“They look like pinpoints,” Lopez Alegria said of the flakes on Sunday.
Lopez Alegria and Williams hooked up the permanent cooling system, covered an obsolete radiator retracted by remote control from the ground and stowed a fluid line that was connected to an ammonia reservoir a They then moved on to other jobs ahead of schedule: removing a sun shade, photographing a solar array that will be retracted during space shuttle Atlantis’ mission next month and making electrical connections for a new system that will allow power from the station to be shared with a docked shuttle.
The third spacewalk is set for Thursday, marking the first time three spacewalks will have been conducted in such a short period at the space station without a shuttle docked to it. Lopez-Alegria plans to conduct a fourth spacewalk with Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin on February 22.
After Sunday’s spacewalk, Lopez-Alegria moved to third on the list of the most time spent spacewalking.
He is expected to surpass Jerry Ross’ US record of more than 58 hours over nine space- walks by the end of the month. Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov has more than 77 hours and 30 minutes over 16 spacewalks.
