Dec 18 2007
From The Space Library
Over a period of 6 hours and 56 minutes, Expedition 16 Commander Peggy A. Whitson and Flight Engineer Daniel M. Tani undertook the 100th spacewalk for ISS construction. The astronauts focused on inspecting two devices related to the power-generating solar arrays—the SARJ and the beta gimbal assembly (BGA) on the starboard side. Both devices had malfunctioned. The spacewalk, a so-called fact-finding mission, sought to determine what had caused the SARJ to shed metal filings and the BGA to trip circuit breakers. Whitson and Tani found widespread contamination inside the gear that rotates the SARJ. They also retrieved a set of bearings—one of 12 on the joint—suspected of being a source of the contamination. They used orange Kempton tape to take samples of the metal filings. The astronauts found no damage to the cables and other hardware on the BGA joint, which had suffered triple electrical failures on 8 December. During this EVA, Whitson, who had already made history as the first female commander of the ISS, surpassed Sunita L. William’s spacewalking record to set a new record for women in space, at 32 hours and 36 minutes.
Todd Halvorson, “Whitson, ‘The Queen of EVA’: Commander Sets Record for Female Spacewalkers,” Florida Today (Brevard, FL), 19 December 2007; Robert Z. Pearlman, “Astronauts Mark 100th Station Spacewalk,” Space.com, 18 December 2007, http://www.space.com/news/cs-071218-100th-iss-spacewalk.html (accessed 29 November 2010); Tariq Malik, “Spacewalkers Inspect Space Station’s Solar Wing Joints,” Space.com, 18 December 2007, http://www.space.com/071218-expedition16-fourth-spacewalk-wrap.html (accessed 29 November 2010).
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