Spacewalkers Do Work on Station

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. —  With a joyous whoop, two astronauts floated out of space shuttle Discovery on Sunday and hooked up cables and antennas on the newest addition of the international space station.

Spacewalkers Bill McArthur and Leroy Chiao spent six hours working on the aluminum framework that had been installed on the space station Saturday.

Their excitement streamed through the radio lines as they toiled 240 miles up.

“Woo-hoo!” they shouted again and again. They described the 140-foot space station towering out of Discovery’s cargo bay as “huge” and “gorgeous.”

“This is too cool,” McArthur called down.

In the first of four spacewalks planned for this ambitious space station construction mission, McArthur and Chiao connected a series of power and data cables between the new framework, a girder-like truss, and the space station’s Unity module.

The men also rearranged two antennas on the truss and bolted a toolbox to its surface. They attached the powerful, 6 1/2-foot dish antenna to the end of a 12-foot boom and gently swung it out. “Whoa! Look at the boom!” McArthur said.

Given the delicate antenna’s thermal sensitivity and precise connections, “that was one of the scariest tasks, I think, we’ve been presented in a long time,” said Mission Control spacewalk officer Daryl Schuck. “All of these things came together and worked perfectly.”

Besides antennas, the 15-square-foot truss holds four motion-control gyroscopes. It will serve as the base for a solar panel that will be installed in December by the next shuttle visitors.

McArthur performed his chores while strapped to the end of Discovery’s 50-foot robot arm. “I was wondering what it was going to be like being out on the end of the arm, not being able to see the shuttle,” he said. “It’s a strange feeling. My toes are curling right up.”

To NASA’s disappointment, hardly any of the spacewalking work was seen down on Earth.

An antenna failure aboard Discovery has prevented the crew of seven from beaming down live, continuous video since Thursday.

Astronauts have never attempted four spacewalks before on a space station mission.