Jan 15 1998
From The Space Library
American astronaut David A. Wolf made his first spacewalk, accompanied by veteran spacewalker Anatoly Y. Solovyev, Commander of the Mir space station. Solovyev, making his 18th spacewalk, set the world's record for the highest number of spacewalks by one individual .382 The spacewalk began 20 minutes later than scheduled, because of problems opening locks on the malfunctioning outer hatch. The scheduled task had been to assess wear and tear on the exterior of the station using a photoreflectometer designed in the United States. David A. Wolf worked for 2 hours trying to verify whether the device was working properly, but only succeeded in taking readings on the shell of the nine-year-old Kvant-2 module, one of the station's oldest compartments. Engineers planned to use the data to help make selections for materials and protective coatings for the new ISS. Flight Director Vladimir A. Solovyov explained in a news conference at Mission Control outside Moscow, "the device proved to be far from mature, so it was decided to skip the examination of the core module." Instead, the two men studied the holes in the Spektr module, which had suffered punctures during a collision with a cargo craft on 25 June 1997.
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