Associated Press
With the Columbus lab now secured to the International Space Station, the ten orbiting astronauts rolled up their sleeves for their next big job: getting the lab running.
The shuttle and station crews planned to enter the science lab Tuesday and hook up all the power and data cables.
They woke up Tuesday to pianist Jim Brickman's "Dream Come True," a dedication from astronaut Rex Walheim's family.
"Doing a spacewalk certainly is a dream come true but the biggest dream come true is having a wonderful wife, Margie, and my two great little boys, Alex and Jeffrey," Walheim said.
Walheim was one of two spacewalkers who helped install Europe's shiny new two-billion-U.S.-dollar lab on Monday during an outing that took longer to complete than expected.
The astronauts shouted and cheered when the 23-foot (7-meter), 14-ton lab finally reached its docking port on the station, after a slow move out of the shuttle Atlantis's payload bay.
"A great day for Europe," said the European Space Agency's station program manager, Alan Thirkettle. "She looks just beautiful."
Final Obstacles
The spacewalk by Walheim and Stanley Love lasted eight hours, one and a half hours longer than usual. Germany's recovering astronaut, Hans Schlegel, was stuck inside the whole time.
Schlegel was supposed to float outside with Walheim to help with Columbus's hookup but got sick following last week's liftoff and was replaced by Love.
The last-minute switch in crew prompted NASA to delay Columbus's installation by a day and lengthen Atlantis's space station visit.
U.S. and European space officials have not divulged the illness.
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
