STS-92 Day 7 Highlights

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On Tuesday, October 17, 2000, 5:45 a.m. CDT, STS-92 MCC Status Report # 12 reports:

Mission Specialists Leroy Chiao and Bill McArthur will team up once again today to conduct the third scheduled space walk of this mission, setting the stage for future on-orbit construction and the arrival of the Expedition 1 crew in November.

Today^Òs space walk, scheduled to begin just before 9:30 a.m., paves the way for installation of the station^Òs large solar arrays later this year as Chiao and McArthur install two current converter units to process power that will be generated by the arrays, and prepare the worksite where the arrays will be attached. The converter units ^Ö called DDCUs ^Ö are 129-pound power processing systems that will provide precisely regulated power output from the massive solar arrays. With assistance from robot arm operator Koichi Wakata who will ferry the spacewalkers around the growing station, Chiao and McArthur will unfasten the DDCUs from their locations in Discovery^Òs payload bay and install them on the Z1 truss in a process that will take about two hours to complete.

They will then turn their attention to final power cable connections on both the Z1 truss and newly-installed docking port, PMA-3, connecting and reconfiguring cables to route power from PMA-2 to PMA-3 for the arrival of Endeavour and STS-97 crew next month. Finally, McArthur and Chiao will attach a second tool storage box on the Z1 truss, providing a place to hold the tools and spacewalking aids that will be used during upcoming assembly flights. McArthur will retrieve a bag of tools and hardware attached to the exterior of the Unity module and place it in the storage boxes. The tools were temporarily stowed on Unity during a May 1999 space walk conducted by astronauts Tammy Jernigan and Dan Barry during STS-96, the first Shuttle docking with the International Space Station.

Overnight, space station flight controllers in Houston completed commanding a series of 16 bolts to their closed position, securing PMA-3 to its new location on the Unity module, following a planned 12-hour thermal conditioning period. The docking port, installed during yesterday^Òs space walk, will be used by the STS-97 crew when Endeavour docks with the International Space Station.

The next Mission Control Center status report will be issued at 6 p.m., or as events warrant.

On Tuesday, October 17, 2000, 7:30 p.m. CDT, STS-92 MCC Status Report # 13 reports:

Mission Specialists Leroy Chiao and Bill McArthur completed the third successful spacewalk of Discovery's STS-92 mission at 4:18 p.m. CDT Tuesday, installing two DC-to-DC converter units atop the International Space Station's new Z1 Truss. Those two 129-pound converters, called DDCUs, will convert electricity generated by the huge solar arrays to be attached during the next shuttle mission to the proper voltage.

Today's spacewalk began at 9:30 a.m. and ended at 4:18 p.m., almost exactly as planned. Total time of Tuesday's EVA was 6 hours, 48 minutes. That brings to 20 hours, 23 minutes the total time of the three spacewalks performed thus far in Discovery's mission, and the total time of space station construction spacewalks to 62 hours, 38 minutes. A fourth spacewalk is scheduled for Wednesday. It too will prepare the Z1 Truss for attachment of the solar arrays.

Chaio and McArthur were helped by the robot arm in moving around the station. Koichi Wakata and Mike Lopez-Alegria split the arm-operation duties on Tuesday, with Lopez-Alegria taking the first half.

The spacewalkers also completed power cable connections on both the Z1 truss and newly installed docking port, PMA-3. They connected and reconfigured cables to route power from Pressurized Mating Adapter-2 to PMA-3 for the arrival of Endeavour and the STS-97 crew next month. They also attached a second tool storage box on the Z1 truss, providing a place to hold the tools and spacewalking aids for future assembly flights. McArthur stocked the boxes with tools and hardware that had been attached to the Unity module. STS-96 Astronauts Tammy Jernigan and Dan Barry had left the tools on the outside of Unity during a May 1999 spacewalk.

After today's spacewalk, Discovery Commander Brian Duffy and Pilot Pam Melroy completed the second of the three station reboosts scheduled for STS-92. They fired reaction control system jets in a series of pulses of 1.4 seconds each, over a 30-minute period, gently raising the station's orbit by about 1.7 statute miles.

On Wednesday astronauts Jeff Wisoff and Lopez-Alegria are scheduled to perform the fourth and final spacewalk of the STS-92 flight. Among activities will be deployment of the Z1 utility tray, and opening and closing of the Z1 Manual Berthing Mechanism latches. Wisoff and Lopez-Alegria also will test the SAFER, or "simplified aid for EVA rescue," a backpack that could enable an astronaut drifting away from the shuttle or the station to get back to the spacecraft. Finally, they will test methods for rescuing an incapacitated astronaut.

The next Mission Control Center status report will be issued at 6 a.m. Wednesday, or as events warrant.

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