Chris Cantell Discusses Science: Astronauts take another spacewalk for tamer job by Radka Konkolova

People and scientists are usually so curious about the universe. So they have been preparing astronauts who then goes aloft and do some research there for many years. The biggest rivals in this direction are Russian and Americans. They have competed since the first flight to the space and actually that fight had probably started many years before that occassion. But recently it seems they perhaps started to cooperate, because they can offer information to each other which is cheaper than it would be when doing alone.

There have been comparatively enough humans somewhere above our heads, somewhere above the Earth atmosphere. And although we can say the technology and construction of space shuttles are in high quality, there are still some problems with some components of Russian shuttle Soyuz. The members of Expedition 17, what is the seventeenth crew which will stay in cosmos on the board of International Space Station (ISS) for quite long time, got something special as a task. First two members of the crew, commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko, are already aboard. This expedition is split to two phases. It started on April 8, 2008 when the space shuttle started from Russian cosmodrom Bajkonur. Both Russian from Federal Cosmic Agency of Russia (RKA) will stay aboard till October this year. The third member of the group is not „stable“. There have been two of them and they are both Americans from NASA. The first one was the part of the expedition from April to June. The second one arrived on space shuttle Discovery in June and will stay there to the end of the mission, till October as well. His name is Gregory Chamitoff.

These astronauts otherwise got tasks, but they should make only one spacewalk. First time they left ISS last Thursday, July 10, 2008. But only one left was impossible because of the risk of possible explosions, which could damage their scafanders. So within five days they negotiated the discharge twice.

These all were because there have been problems with landing, because there are explosive bolt in every shuttle which should split the „ship“ when landing. But this bolt is probably not very certain, because it didn’t explode. So the main task of their was to remove this bolt very carefully and carry it to the space shuttle. It will fly to the Earth with them in October and will be dismount in order to detect what is the reason why it don’t want to explode when it is needed.

The main reason of Tuesday action was preparation to seismologic experiment, which should be a system of warning against earthquakes in the time.

Because in the universe everything lasts much more than on the Earth, quite easy process took about six and half hour. It is quite long time and both astronauts were very exhausted when finally finished. They had to take photos of this action and of results their finished work, too. Afterwards they had to carry „bottles“ with bacteria, fungi and maggots which have been in the space for 18 months. The reason why this is so is the fact that scientists have wanted to know if they would stay alive in such conditions. During this Chamitoff was on the board of Discovery because of the safety and he secured them in the case of immediate happening of anything. So thanks God they survived it in the health, although this action was very uphill.

So they will spend the rest of the time probably only in the space shuttle and won’t go for such dangerous and uphill spacewalks till their departure on the Earth.

I don’t know exactly, but probably I wouldn’t want to see Earth from such perspective, because stay in the space is in my opinion extremely challenging and can even damage people’s health. But on the other hand, there are not many people in the world who can say: „I was there and see the whole Earth and part of endless universe...“

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080715/ap_on_sc/space_station;_ylt=AniyN1VbF7BWCg1xKJWlcM6s0NUE

by Radka Konkolova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Lucia Adamova