Space-station wing suffers a rip
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A giant solar wing ripped as it was being unfurled by astronauts aboard the international space station on Tuesday, creating another problem for NASA at the orbiting outpost.
The next shuttle flight on Dec. 6 could be delayed if this latest problem isn’t resolved quickly, said NASA’s space-station-program manager, Mike Suffredini.
“We don’t clearly know what we’re dealing with yet, and as soon as we know what we’re dealing with, then we can talk about what our next steps are,” Suffredini said.
The astronauts halted the wing extension when they noticed the damage. By then, the solar panel was extended 90 of its 115 feet. Space-station commander Peggy Whitson said the sun angle prevented her and the others from seeing the 2 ½-foot tear sooner.
The torn solar wing was producing 97 percent of anticipated power despite the damage, Suffredini said. NASA’s bigger concern is the structural problem posed by a partially deployed panel.
The damage was especially troublesome for the 10 space travelers because it came on the heels of an otherwise successful day. Two of Discovery’s crew members had finished a seven-hour spacewalk and were reveling in the smooth extension of the first of two retracted solar wings on a newly installed beam.
During the spacewalk, Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock installed a massive beam holding a pair of solar wings, which were folded like an accordion. It took three days to move the beam from one location on the space station to another 145 feet away and was considered one of the hardest construction jobs ever attempted in orbit.
The astronauts beamed down pictures of the torn solar wing so engineers could determine how bad it was and what, if anything, could be done to fix it. Suffredini said they could cut whatever might be snagging the solar wing, like a hinge, and possibly sew up the tear.
“We have a lot of options,” he said. “We’re in a good [configuration] to sit here and work through this problem.”