Dec 5 2000
From The Space Library
NASA made data from its Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) available to the public. ASTER, a general-purpose imaging instrument featuring 14 spectral bands, extremely high spatial resolution, and stereo-imaging capabilities, had launched aboard NASA's Terra satellite in December 1999. One of ASTER's primary goals was "to acquire a one-time cloud-free image of the entire land surface of Earth," intended as a baseline image for monitoring environmental change.
Endeavour astronauts Joseph R. Tanner and Carlos I. Noriega worked outside the ISS to connect power lines, correcting an electrical shortage that had restricted the station's first crew to two of three habitable modules. The two astronauts also inspected the first solar panel that they had unfurled, to determine whether the crew could correct its tension. Wearing a small TV camera on his helmet, Noriega beamed down to Mission Control images of the loose tension cables on the array's right wing. The cables had slipped off their pulleys during the solar panel's deployment on 3 December. Tanner remarked that an astronaut could place one tension cable back on its pulley without too much trouble, but that the other cable would require more work. Mission Control instructed the spacewalkers to try to fix the cables on their third and final spacewalk the following Clay.
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