Wallheim and Love will install two systems on the exterior of the European Space Laboratory Columbus
Space Shuttle Atlantis crew members on mission STS-122 began preparations for the mission's third and final spacewalk.
As part of the preparations, Rex Wallheim and Stanley Love slept in the Quest airlock on the space station yesterday. The reason for this camping was to clean their bodies of nitrogen before they left for the spacewalk today (Friday) at 08:49 EST - 15:40 Israel time.
During the spacewalk, Valheim and Lab will install two scientific facilities on the outside of the Columbus Space Laboratory - SOLAR - an observatory for monitoring the sun and a facility for storing experiments that need to be carried out in the space environment.
The Atlantis crew and the International Space Station's 16th crew yesterday spent a significant part of the day adjusting drawers and cabinets inside the Columbus Space Laboratory, in preparation for the scientific work expected to take place there. Yesterday, the Chancellor of Germany spoke with the ten astronauts currently staying at the station. Ensign Hans Schlagel, one of the members of the Atlantis team is from Germany, and he was sent on behalf of the European Space Agency. The CEO of the European Space Agency Jean-Jacques Dordin and Thomas Reiter, a former astronaut, also from Germany, also joined the conversation.
Atlantis is expected to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday.
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To Eyal
Write in Google: pressurized space suit. You will get additional sites that will explain the subject to you. for example:
http://lib.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=10042
Sabdarmish Yehuda
This is the reason I mentioned.
Read for example here
That's interesting...I'm not familiar with this issue. As far as you know Michael, why is the pressure when walking outside the station lower than usual in the first place? After all, when the astronauts leave the station, they get into suits that, among other things, take care of maintaining a "natural" air pressure around their bodies. Is the point that the suits do not have the ability to provide exactly the normal pressure? My feeling is that it is for another reason.
Eyal:
This is to prevent decompression sickness - the same phenomenon that occurs in the bodies of divers when they ascend too quickly and the pressure on their bodies decreases.
The pressure exerted on the astronauts' bodies decreases when they walk in space.
To prevent the development of nitrogen bubbles in their blood (nitrogen at normal pressure is dissolved in the blood and partially turns into bubbles when the pressure drops) they must park for a while in an area with intermediate pressure (just as divers "park" in intermediate valleys)
Can you please get an explanation why the astronauts have to purge themselves of nitrogen before leaving the station?