Spacewalking astronauts pull off urgent station repairs

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Spacewalking astronauts completed urgent repairs at the International Space Station today, replacing equipment that failed three days earlier and restoring a backup for a vital data-relay system.

It took commander Peggy Whitson much longer than expected to install the spare unit. Success finally came after her spacewalking partner, Jack Fischer, blasted the area with nitrogen gas to clear away flecks of metal.

Mission Control noted the failure occurred only 2 days, 21 hours, 38 minutes earlier, "and we are already back in a good position, so excellent work. "

Testing confirmed the new unit worked, restoring full redundancy to the system that operates the space station's solar panels, radiators and robotic equipment.

"Very good. We are really happy about that," Whitson said.

Today's spacewalk lasted less than three hours – exceedingly short by NASA standards. Whitson has now tied the record for most spacewalks by an American – 10 – and moved up to third place on the all-time spacewalking list.

The failed data-relay unit – recently refurbished with upgraded software – was installed in March. Even though a second unit worked just fine after Saturday's breakdown, NASA scrambled to put together a spacewalk so there would be a backup in case that second unit failed, too, crippling the system for station cooling and solar-energy production.

Whitson had no trouble removing the broken unit. But it took her two tries to install the replacement.