NASA STS-117 Status
Report #19
(18 June 2007) Astronauts Patrick
Forrester and Steve Swanson completed the fourth and final spacewalk of
Atlantis' mission at 5:54 p.m. CDT, wrapping up all the tasks planned for the
mission and finishing some jobs that will reduce the workload for future
spacewalkers.
The spacewalk was the 87th in support of station
assembly and maintenance, the 59th staged out of the station and the 36th out
of the Quest airlock. Eleven spacewalks have been completed this year and 14
remain.
Forrester and Swanson began the spacewalk at 11:25 a.m. The two
made quick work of retrieving a TV camera and its support structure from a
stowage platform attached to Quest and installing it on the S/3 truss. They
then verified the Drive Lock Assembly (DLA) 2 configuration and removed the
last six Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ) launch restraints.
Inside,
Mission Specialist Jim Reilly choreographed the outside work from the shuttle
flight deck, shadowed by Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov who will
assume that role for the July 20 spacewalk by Clay Anderson and Fyodor
Yurchikhin.
By 3:17 p.m., the two had cleared the path on S3 for the
Mobile Base System by removing temporary rail stops and hardware that had
secured the S3/S4 in the shuttle's payload bay, thus completing the major tasks
slated for the STS-117 mission. The spacewalkers then began some of the
get-ahead tasks mission managers had hoped to complete.
The two
spacewalkers also installed a computer network cable on the Unity node, opened
the hydrogen vent valve on the Destiny laboratory that was installed on
Friday's spacewalk, and tethered two orbital debris shield panels on the
station's service module.
Tomorrow morning at approximately 9:28 a.m.,
Mission Control in Moscow plans to fire Russian attitude control thrusters. The
thrusters have not been used since the Russian central computer and terminal
computer went down earlier in the week. Those computers continue in stable
operation.
Also tomorrow, astronauts onboard Atlantis will have a much
deserved day off, bidding farewell to the Expedition 15 crew and closing the
hatch between the two vehicles at 5:23 p.m. Atlantis will undock from the
station at 9:42 a.m. CDT Tuesday, circling the orbiting complex once as it
departs.
The next STS-117 status report will be issued Monday morning or
earlier if events warrant.
(source: NASA Johnson Space
Center)