Spring Break
Space crew brings supplies
Associated Press
“Hey, how are you doing? You guys are awesome!” U.S. astronaut Jim Voss of the station said to space shuttle Endeavour commander Kent Rominger as the shuttle crew floated into the station through an open hatch.
Members of both crews snapped pictures between handshakes and hugs.
Russian cosmonaut and station commander Yuri Usachev, Voss and U.S. astronaut Susan Helms arrived at the station, named Alpha, in March for a 4 1/2 -month stay.
Since Endeavour docked at the station on Saturday, its seven-man crew and the station's crew had to settle for waving at each other through a porthole.
On Sunday, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and U.S. astronaut Scott Parazynski performed a spacewalk to unfold and power up the new 58-foot robot arm that the shuttle delivered. Hadfield wiped tears from his eyes as he greeted Alpha's crew Monday.
After the formal welcome, Helms and Voss manipulated the newly attached arm's from a control center in the station, checking the joints. One end of the arm was moved 24 1/4 feet from its packing crate to an anchor on the station; it took three hours to complete the step because of all the tests.
“Congratulations. You've just added a new part of the station,” Mission Control radioed once the job was finished.
“We've got a lot of excited people up here,'' Helms replied.
Voss said the arm was very smooth and precise, “just a joy to operate.”
Later Monday morning, Parazynski and Italian astronaut Umberto Guidoni moved an Italian-built cargo carrier, named Raffaello, from Endeavour's payload bay onto the station.
The carrier contains nearly 10,000 pounds of supplies, from food and clothes to science experiments. It will be emptied, filled with trash and then returned to Earth aboard the shuttle.
The arm, 3,618 pounds of steel, aluminum and graphite epoxy, has “hands” at either end and seven joints. It will act as a high-tech construction crane, walking end-over-end like an inchworm, to add pieces to the station and lessen the need for astronauts to do outside work during spacewalks.
On Tuesday, Hadfield and Parazynski will go back outside to wire up the end of the arm in its new location. On Wednesday, the new arm will hand off its packing crate to a smaller arm attached to the shuttle.
The shuttle was launched on Thursday and is due to return to Earth next Monday.
The new robotic arm was built by Canada, and Hadfield was the first Canadian to perform a spacewalk.
“Thank you very much for all the people who helped put the arm here,” Hadfield said Sunday. “Scott and I were just the deliverymen. And it really opens the door to what all of us can be doing together here internationally, beginning to explore space as a planet.”
