The second spacewalk on mission STS-118 was completed

The astronauts replaced a faulty gyroscope

The second spacewalk on the STS-118 flight of the shuttle Atlantis was completed. Astronauts Dave Williams and Rick Mastracino successfully installed a new torque control gyroscope on the Z1 component of the space station during the mission, which ended at XNUMX:XNUMX p.m. Israel time. The gyroscope is one of four used to control the shuttle's altitude.

In the first half of the spacewalk, the two dismantled the old, damaged gyroscope. Before completing the mission, which lasted six hours and 28 minutes, the two placed the gyroscope in an external storage facility known as Dock 2, where it will remain until it is returned to Earth on a future shuttle mission.

The next spacewalk will take place on Wednesday. Mastracino and Clayton Anderson (the 15th crew member of the International Space Station) will prepare the P6 component for transfer to another location on the station during the STS-120 mission. A fourth spacewalk was added to the schedule, when it was decided to extend the STS-118 mission by three days, for a possible repair of the dent discovered in the shuttle's heat shield.

In other activities - the team members continued to transfer cargo between the Endeavor and the station and experts on the ground continue to evaluate the results of the tests performed by the astronauts for damage to the heat shield at the bottom of the shuttle.