Spacewalk Scheduled Tuesday Is The Last Of NASA's Shuttle Era

*Scroll down for photos of the spacewalk.*

(MARCIA DUNN, AP/THE HUFFINGTON POST) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A pair of astronauts ventured out on the last spacewalk of NASA's space shuttle era Tuesday to retrieve a broken pump from the International Space Station and install a fill-er-up experiment for a robot.

The space station's two-armed robot Dextre won't tackle the $22.6 million playset - a fancy Fisher-Price toy as one astronaut describes it - until long after Atlantis departs and the shuttle program ends.

But perhaps more than anything else on this final journey by a shuttle, the robotic demo illustrates the possibilities ahead for NASA: satellite-refueling stations in space run by robots.

In a departure from previous shuttle visits, the spacewalking job fell to space station astronauts, Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr., who teamed up for three spacewalks in 2008. The four-person Atlantis crew is the smallest in decades, and so the lone spacewalk of the mission was handed over to the full-time station residents.

It was the 160th spacewalk in the 12 1/2-year life of the orbiting outpost, and the last one planned for Americans for nearly a year.

Fossum and Garan paused to admire the view 245 miles below - the Kennedy Space Center - before heading to a storage platform holding the old, broken pump.

"Hello Kennedy, beautiful launch," Fossum called out. Atlantis departed Kennedy on Friday on the very last shuttle launch.

The ammonia coolant pump stopped working last July and, for more than two weeks, left the space station with only half its cooling capability. Space station residents had to perform three emergency spacewalks last summer to replace the pump and restore full cooling to all the on-board equipment.

NASA wants the pump brought back to Earth aboard Atlantis so engineers can figure out why it stopped working to help them keep the on-board station pumps running. The space station is intended to operate until at least 2020.

Garan gripped the pump as the space station's robot arm maneuvered him over to Atlantis. The pump was anchored onto a platform in the shuttle's payload bay, ready for next week's ride home. "Nice looking spaceship you guys got here," Fossum observed.

The newly delivered robotic experiment, meanwhile, consists of a big box holding four customized tools, including a wire cutter and a safety cap removal device, as well as an assortment of knobs, caps, valves and a half gallon of ethanol.

Dextre - a hulking metal robot with 11-foot arms - will release locks on the tools in August but won't try out the workbench until January.

The designers of the experiment - based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. - envision robots one day using these methods to fill the fuel tanks of satellites orbiting as high as 22,500 miles. That would keep the spacecraft operating longer, instead of becoming expensive pieces of space junk. What's more, spacecraft bound for distant worlds could fill up after launch, thereby flying more payloads because of the savings in fuel weight.

While the spacewalk unfolded, the majority of the eight astronauts inside worked to unload the nearly 5 tons of supplies that were delivered in a giant cargo carrier by Atlantis. It represents a year's worth of food, clothes and other housekeeping items, to tide the crew over in case commercial rocket makers fall behind in their own cargo runs. The first such haul is supposed to take place by year's end.

Until now, the shuttle has hoisted the bulk of supplies to the space station. Cargo runs by Russia, Japan and Europe will continue.

NASA is turning to private enterprise in the post-shuttle period, so it can meet the White House goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars the decade after that.

The 13-day flight by Atlantis is the last for the 30-year shuttle program. Atlantis is due to return July 21 to Kennedy, where it will go on display at a tourist center.

Take a look at photos from the spacewalk (below), then visit our slideshow of heart-pounding spacewalks completed by astronauts over the years (here).

Comments

[Tuck Steelman]

06:17 PM on 07/12/2011

I think NASA will have to find it's place in a changing world where international and private enterprise will do the jobs it has been doing. It maybe going back to it's roots of exploration and technological development. It may be that instead of trying to find a place as an agency that provides a business service, it re-focuses on the pure science and knowledge that no business can afford to do. Keep in mind that exploration is cutting edge science and technology. We are asking companies to design, build, and test equipment that has never existed. In doing so, there is a process of creation that becomes applicable to other human endeavors. You may not appreciate the knowlege that is gathered, but I'll bet your using elements from the creation process used to gather that knowledge.

[Rude Monk]

01:50 PM on 07/12/2011

Jsarets,please tell our forum posters what the people in charge intend to do with ISS in about 15 to 20 years.

[jsarets]

02:06 PM on 07/12/2011

The ISS is funded through 2020 but may be extended further. When funding eventually expires, spacecraft will be launched to the station to decelerate the complex out of its orbit. Then it will burn up in the atmosphere over the southern pacific ocean.

Until then, the station will be used for a lot of science and engineering. The alpha magnetic spectrometer is inspecting cosmic rays for evidence of antimatter and dark matter. The station will test a revolutionary electric propulsion system called the variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMR). It will also host an innovative habitation module with an inflatable composite skin and an integrated water blanket for radiation shielding.

[Rude Monk]

06:58 PM on 07/12/2011

Thanks.Many don't know that ISS has at most 10 years left.

[Rudderman]

01:32 PM on 07/12/2011

Great live video right now of the bay and astronauts EVA from NASA TV


http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

[vesaversa1]

01:54 PM on 07/12/2011

Very kewl.

[showme54]

04:14 PM on 07/12/2011

Thanks.

[William Brock]

12:29 PM on 07/12/2011

We still have the Russian and Chinese to conquer the final frontier....

[jsarets]

12:37 PM on 07/12/2011

Yes, the Shuttle (which cannot go beyond low earth orbit) is essential to conquering the final frontier, and any attempt to cancel it in order to explore the inner solar system is simply ludicrous.

/sarcasm

[MoscowMoo]

12:48 PM on 07/12/2011

Well, the point is, they canceled it without having any replacement vehicle ready.

That would be like you getting rid of your car several years before you planned to get a replacement vehicle, and in the meantime you have to depend on your neighbor (who doesn't like you very much) to get you back and forth to your home and job for several years.

[snarky the shark]

12:14 PM on 07/12/2011

They're really milking this story. The next story will be, "astronaut's final pee in the space shuttle."

[RABSR]

12:07 PM on 07/12/2011

Nearly 50 years of technical and space-dominance erased by the stroke of a child’s pen, or crayon as the case may be.

Is there nothing this mistake won’t destroy?

Our national defense strategy relies on our ability to maintain our space and near-earth orbital assets. When the Russian’s drop us from their launch schedule maybe the Chinese will lend a hand.

No one, not even the “chosen-one”, could do this much damage by accident.

You have to wonder why.

You just have to wonder.

[jsarets]

12:35 PM on 07/12/2011

The U.S. military and intelligence services do not rely on the Space Shuttle.

They use Delta IV and Atlas V, which replaced Titan IV, which was developed in a crash program after the Challenger disaster when the Pentagon was finally freed from Nixon's decree that they should use no other launch vehicle but Shuttle. The Pentagon never really liked Shuttle and never wanted to involve a human crew in deploying their satellites.

As for the ISS, the Russians rely on us as much as we rely on them. They use electrical power from our solar panels, attitude control from our control moment gyros, and high-rate communications from our Ku-band Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, among other assets. Your portrayal of a belligerent Russian space program intent on humiliating the U.S. is a faulty premise. Besides, we have multiple commercial crew transport spacecraft in the pipeline for 2014-2015.

[MoscowMoo]

12:50 PM on 07/12/2011

And just how much money are you willing to lay on the fact that we will definitely be flying again in the 2014-2015 timeframe?

[showme54]

02:39 AM on 07/13/2011

Do you know that it was in 2004 George W Bush decided to cancel the Space Shuttle Program and scheduled it to end in 2010? You do know that it was the Bush Administration that also made plans that American Astronauts would be flying aboard Russian Soyuz in the gap? You do know that the reason Bush's plans for the Constellation was cancelled was because of recommendations by experts because it was behind schedule and over budget well before Obama was sworn in.

Also, this was the last flight of the Space Shuttle Program. NASA is still functioning and there are other future Programs on the drawing board.

Sometimes instead of 'wondering' all it takes is a couple of minutes of googling.

[rf dude]

12:05 PM on 07/12/2011

Who will go down in history as the last astronaut to drop a lunker in the Lunar Loo...

[mrsentinel]

12:29 PM on 07/13/2011

ROFL

[bushitbrain]

11:58 AM on 07/12/2011

Just to say "Goodbye & GoodRidance" to the shuttle program, which has killed 14 Astronauts, & failed utterly to achieve an economical flight cost into orbit after 20 yrs. Instead, NASA has used it as the feel-good `Poster Rocket' of its post-Apollo glory days, & never really tried to build a replacement, nor inspect it prior to re-entry, until the last shuttle breakup forced their hand.
Soon civilian contractors will take over this critical role of boosting payloads into orbit, & civilian space tourism, & the shuttle program will be spun into history with glory galore. The future of man in space is far less relevant to science, than robotic missions are.

[Rude Monk]

12:20 PM on 07/12/2011

All the asteroid mining and transport will be done by automated cargo ships.
The charade is over.

[worldtrav]

11:53 AM on 07/12/2011

Quick, someone name a benefit to society - from the Space Station - worth even half of the 4 Trillion dollars debt we have racked up to fly a handfull of white males (and token others) in a Billion dollars per flight video game?

[nicko68]

11:58 AM on 07/12/2011

How about the GPS you're using?
Russia will have monopoly, they'll charge us what they want.

[jsarets]

12:24 PM on 07/12/2011

First, we haven't spent anywhere near $4 trillion on the space program.

As for ISS research, I recommend this paper, entitled "International Space Station Science Research Accomplishments During the Assembly Years: An Analysis of Results from 2000-2008":

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20090029998_2009030907.pdf

One memorable result came from an improvised experiment designed by an ISS astronaut during his spare time. Astrophysicists understood that the young solar system formed by gravitational accretion of dust particles orbiting the sun, but they didn't understand what kick-started the process, clumping dust particles together into rocks with meaningful gravity fields.

So the astronaut poured some salt into a plastic bag, shook it up to distribute the crystals, and let it float in microgravity for several hours. When he returned, the salt crystals were clumped together in one cluster. After consulting with scientists on the ground, follow-up experiments were carried out which determined that electromagnetic forces between the particles was responsible for the clumping.

Simple in hindsight, but this was the first time that scientists had investigated the dynamics of particles in microgravity, and all because an inquisitive astronaut had a few moments of free time in microgravity to perform some simple but novel experiments. This isn't the kind of experiment we'd launch a robotic spacecraft to perform. Economics aside, the thought probably would not have occurred to us.

[gutenmorgen]

01:30 PM on 07/12/2011

Now name one scientific paper based on Space Station research that has appeared in "Science" or "Nature, London".

[mrsentinel]

12:31 PM on 07/13/2011

Wow. I like this guy. Very informative.

[farleft1917]

11:44 AM on 07/12/2011

The money saved will not go to the people but to slaughter families in Islamic states.
The money saved will not go to the people but to the Russian space industry.
The money saved will not go to the people but to the companies building 1960's technology and ten times the cost.

Obama Nobel Peace Prize winning War criminal is gutting NASA while the Pentagon has a small payload robot spy shuttle. Why are we paying trillions over the years for wars and trillions more for war in space?

Americans will starve regardless but I'd rather see space travel rather than slaughter.

We are now officially finished. Plutocracy will not let us into space...that's for weightless shots of Paris Hilton's daughter having sex with a Chinese cosmonaut in a Bigelows Space Hotel.

[R2D2-51]

12:42 PM on 07/12/2011

Because like it or not you live in a society where there are people who want more for themselves & less for others, because that is the only way they can have more given Capitalism operates on pure competition & less on cooperation so that everyone has what they need to survive.

You probably missed this, but this program did put a lot of food on a lot of families tables, and Xmas presents under the tree for millions of people associated with doing work in both the mfg. & support of the program including my own family when I worked at the Space Transportation Systems Group (STS.origination) at Rockwell International at the old WW II P-51 Mustang & B-25 Mitchell plant on Lakewood Blvd. in Downey California as an in-house Firefighter Captain/Medic, including some 250 sub-contractors.

Ea. Shuttle was 1 Billion bucks.

That billion dollars was money which gets distributed & used by millions of people as a tool for providing for the essential needs of providing for yourself & family & spurring economic human activity among a lot of people.

Mfg. & Fabrication of 5 Space Shuttle (4 for NASA, 1 for USAF)

Plant Operation of Human activity: 1978-1986

Day shift, 1982: 42,000 people
Second Shift: 28,000 people
Third Shift: 18,000 people

Running 24/7 365 except us & maintenance for 2 week Xmas vacation maintenance shut downrst 5 ships were built & Challenger replacement.

We were prime contractor in 1970's & early 80's until Boeing got the prime

[R2D2-51]

12:45 PM on 07/12/2011

It's not up to us anymore how the group collective decides to spend its time & its money, but suffice it to say that when you consider the homo erectus has the ability to create any kind of world that it wants for itself in order to survive, yet in looking around the world you see what you see, it's absolutely pathetic we care so little for each other with few exceptions in ways that bury forever the notion of more for me means less for you mentality as a human legacy that is far past due.

Who is gonna change that? You?

[Vegasyankee]

11:12 AM on 07/12/2011

There are 16 trillion miles in one light year.

Hubble can make out galaxies the are 10 billion light years away.

There are an estimated 100 million galaxies in space that Hubble can see that range in size to smaller than and much larger that our own.

Support NASA & Space Exploration in America.

[worldtrav]

11:54 AM on 07/12/2011

Rob the treasury to give a few white males rides on their useless toys.

[MoscowMoo]

01:12 PM on 07/12/2011

Rob the treasury? Clearly you haven't done your homework.

NASA's annual budget was $18.7 billion for 2010. Of that, $6.2 billion was for its Space Operations division (Space Shuttle, Space Station, etc.). That same year, the U.S. federal budget was $3.5 trillion. This means that it cost a mere fraction of less than 1% of our country's budget to run the space program.

Putting that further into perspective, the Iraq war was costing us $2 billion per week. So the cost of running America's entire human spaceflight program for a year was equivalent to running the Iraq War for 3 weeks.

And if you think the only thing to come out of the space program is white males riding a rocket, you clearly need to boost your knowledge on the subject before you go any further. For one thing, economists estimate that for every dollar spent on the space program, it puts $4 back into our economy (in terms of jobs, new technologies, spin-offs, etc.). That's a heck of a lot better than our country's recent stimulus plan did.

[Tuck Steelman]

05:40 PM on 07/12/2011

Your completely wrong on this. The Shuttle program evolved into one of the more ethnically, theologically, and gender diverse programs this country has had. It amazes me how a kind of anti-intellectualism comes from both the extreme right and the extreme left. You guys should get together and form the Stone-Age Party.

[R2D2-51]

01:13 PM on 07/12/2011

My Father was the Senior Design Engineer for the XLR99 Rocket Motor that was the final version for the X-15 project while working at"Reaction Motors" a Division of the giant rocket builder that propels the Space Shuttle * precursor to building the Shuttle Program.

I followed him into aerospace having worked first at Hughes Satellite Systems Command in Fullerton,CA then Martin Marrieta in San Diego then finally to Rockwell International Space Group in Downey,CA in late 1970's & 80's for the in-house Fire Dept building the 5 shuttles.

Most of these clowns have no clue as to how many millions of families including those in other nations who earn a living to make money, itself a tool to buy what we need to meet the essential needs of survival.

Ea Shuttle at 1 Billion a pop was one of the most dollar for dollar ROI programs of money well spent for what humanity gained in US history as money was distributed among millions of working families including Rockwell at the time the prime contractor(now Boeing) and 250 subs, plus thousands of other suppliers of everything from paper towels in restroom facilities to shop tools used in Building #1 to work on the Iron Bird as the WIP prototype mock-up to build the most advanced avionic systems in the world.

What man learned from that process alone is immeasurable.

[class of 66]

11:11 AM on 07/12/2011

what if someone accidently falls out?

[jsarets]

12:07 PM on 07/12/2011

Spacewalkers are always double-tethered to fixed structures. If they lose their grip on the structure, they can pull on the tethers to get themselves back onto the structure. If for some unprecedented reason they become untethered from the structure, spacewalkers are equipped with a Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER), which is basically a compressed nitrogen jetpack that they can use to propel themselves to the nearest fixed structure. So there is kind of a triple fail-safe in place.

The biggest risk is getting their spacesuit (especially the gloves) snagged on something sharp which punctures to the pressure bladder and depressurizes the suit. The ISS was designed to keep sharp edges to an absolute minimum for this reason, and warnings are read out over the radio whenever spacewalkers approach anything known to be sharp or a pinch hazard.

Spacewalks definitely carry some risk, but there's never been a serious problem. Once in a while there's a minor thing like a CO2 sensor failure that causes a spacewalk to be cut short as a precaution. And spacewalkers have chronic problem with chafing on their hands from the gloves, occasionally losing a fingernail while pushing the pressurized gloves to the limit of their dexterity.

[class of 66]

09:56 AM on 07/13/2011

i was kidding!

[SWEETSPOT]

11:03 AM on 07/12/2011

Theres no time for space walks, they need to come home and help the muslim nations with their space programs!

[KPinSEA]

10:59 AM on 07/12/2011

Contrived headline, this is nowhere near the last spacewalk for American astronauts at the ISS.

[Sweet Leaf]

01:56 PM on 07/12/2011

Or a reading comprehension fail.

[Practicality]

10:53 AM on 07/12/2011

NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts

[worldtrav]

11:55 AM on 07/12/2011

Need Another Scintillion Dollars.