During Wednesday (Wednesday-Thursday night Israel time) the astronaut Sunita Williams (Suni Williams) encountered many difficulties during repeated attempts to fold the solar panels which refused to fold according to the design. (Amir Brent)
Amir Barnett Astronomical Society www.astronomy.org.il
During Wednesday (Wednesday-Thursday night Israel time) the astronaut Sunita Williams (Suni Williams) encountered many difficulties during repeated attempts to fold the solar panels which refused to fold according to the design.
The panels (component P6) need to be folded to finish the installation of components P5, P4 during the spacewalk that is planned to take place on Thursday night (Israel time). No less than 45 times over 6 hours, astronaut Williams contracted the plates and then stretched them in the hope that this would help the plates to contract in the planned way afterwards. Finally, it was decided in the control center not to continue the process, but to convene the NASA experts for a nightly discussion on the issue to come up with possible solutions to the problem.
Despite this, the panels have not been folded completely, but they will allow a gap of about three meters before the retirement of the new solar panels (component P4), the main task of the shuttle mission STS 116 is to install the component P5 which will point the P4 towards the sun.
Astronaut Robert Korvem during the spacewalk to install the P5 component (the reflection of the helmet shows the astronaut Vogelsang)
The space station is currently in a rather sensitive situation, in the last few days half of the solar panels were disconnected from the space station for the installation days, now any malfunction may cause very serious problems.
Concerns at NASA about the space shuttle subsided to a large extent following new photographs of the cracks in the ceramic tiles, according to NASA experts the cracks are not a cause for real concern.
updating
As of 14:00, NASA reported that the solar collectors are now well aligned and tracking the sun.
