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Risky Spacewalk Success for Astronauts ; Space Station Residents Repair Breaker

Posted on: Thursday, 1 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The international space station's two astronauts hustled through an unusually risky spacewalk and successfully replaced a bad circuit breaker Wednesday a sweet victory following last week's failed attempt.

Shouts of "hurray!" and "great!" emanated from space after American Mike Fincke and Russian Gennady Padalka learned their effort had paid off.

"Great job, you guys," Mission Control radioed.

"We're glad to be able to be of service," Fincke said.

It was a long and potentially dangerous haul to the work site and back to the hatch after the repairs were made.

Fincke and Padalka had to cross nearly 100 feet to get to the fried circuit breaker a grueling distance for spacewalkers over difficult terrain. Then they managed to pry off the cover for the row of circuit breakers; it was stiff and incredibly hard to move.

The two were ahead of schedule the entire time, and flight controllers kept urging them to take their time and be careful. The warnings came more frequently as the men made their way back from the work site.

Less than six hours after venturing out, the men were safely back inside.

Last Thursday, they barely made it out the hatch when their spacewalk was aborted, just 14 minutes after it began. An oxygen- flow switch on Fincke's suit did not lock into the proper position and oxygen gushed out of his tank, prompting flight controllers to order the spacewalkers back inside.

NASA was anxious to replace the circuit breaker to restore power to one of the gyroscopes that keep the 225-mile-high outpost steady and pointed in the right direction. The circuit breaker conked out in April, leaving the space station with just two good gyroscopes, the bare minimum. With a new breaker in, the idled gyroscope checked out fine Wednesday night and was expected to be up and running within a day.

The spacewalk was considered riskier than most.

The space station is down to just two crew members, instead of three, because of the grounding of the shuttle fleet since the Columbia disaster. As a result, no one was left inside to watch over everything during the spacewalk a situation NASA never tolerated until this year.

The men also used Russian suits not intended for this type of hand-intensive repair work.

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