The spacewalkers had difficulty disassembling the straps that secured the outer warehouse during its upload on the Atlantis shuttle and used tools to release them
Tonight (Thursday, November 19) the first spacewalk as part of the STS-129 mission took place on the International Space Station. The spacewalk began at 16:24 Israel time which lasted six and a half hours.
During most of the spacewalk, astronauts Mike Furman and Robert Satcher worked on preparing an outboard Payload Attach System or PAS for short, which is installed on the underside of the space station under the S3 component. The team suffered difficulties in releasing a belt and removing a diagonal rope on the device to prepare it to receive cargo - mainly spare parts. They used a sledgehammer, screw gun and sledgehammer without success. The spacewalk planners hope that the cold temperatures at night (each day and night cycle is an hour and a half long) will shrink the strip and allow its removal. Finally they managed to free the belt by hitting it with a hammer and they dismantled the diagonal rope by shaking it for a long time until it came free.
Meanwhile, inside the space station, preparatory work continues for the arrival of a new American component, Tranquility. Station Commander Park Dewin and Flight Engineer Jeff Williams will work in the harmonic component's airlock to rewire the power and cooling data cables as well as the airflow connectors that will connect to the new component. This task also took about six and a half hours. DeWyn Williams will continue this project for several days during the STS-129 mission.
