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The shuttle Atlantis, seen here from the International Space Station as the vessels pass over Central America traveling at 17,500 miles per hour (28,200 kilometers per hour).

This still image was taken from NASA video.

Image courtesy NASA







Two spacewalking astronauts floated out of a hatch on the international space station on Monday to help install a new European lab, while a crewmate who was supposed to participate in the outing helped from inside.
Spacewalkers Rex Walheim and Stanley Love ventured outside as the space station passed over Asia.

"Welcome to spacewalking, buddy," Walheim said as Love made his way through the hatch for his first spacewalk.

"It's awesome," Love replied.

At Last

German astronaut Hans Schlegel was supposed to be Walheim's spacewalking partner, but he was pulled from the job Saturday because of an undisclosed illness.

Schlegel looked and sounded well Sunday and was expected to take part in the second spacewalk of the mission on Wednesday. On Monday, however, he was helping choreograph the outing from inside the station.

The main task for Walheim and Love will be attaching a handle to the Columbus lab so that robotic arm operator Leland Melvin can grab hold of the module and delicately lift it from the cargo bay of the shuttle Atlantis, which brought the device to the space station after launching last week from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Melvin will then install Columbus on the right side of the Harmony module, which the shuttle Discovery's astronauts delivered in December.

The ten-ton Columbus laboratory is Europe's main contribution to the space station.

The original plan called for the module to be launched in 1992 to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World.

Since then, the two-billion-U.S.-dollar lab has endured space station redesigns and slowdowns, as well as a number of shuttle postponements and two shuttle accidents.

"A Big Day" "It's getting more exciting here for us every day," a European flight controller said Monday. "... We're looking forward to a successful Columbus installation today."

"This will be a big day for us," replied French Air Force Gen. Léopold Eyharts, who arrived at the station aboard Atlantis to spend a month setting up and activating the new lab.

With their flight now 12 days long because of the spacewalk delay, Atlantis's astronauts conducted another survey of a thermal blanket that has a torn corner—the stitching came apart at the seams, and the corner pulled up.

Engineers were analyzing the problem to determine whether the blanket would stand up to the intense heat of re-entry at flight's end, or whether spacewalk repairs might be needed. The blanket is located on the right orbital maneuvering system pod back near the shuttle's tail.

NASA is vigilant when it comes to the shuttle's thermal shielding, ever since Columbia was destroyed in 2003 following a foam strike to its wing during launch.

John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said the thermal covering on the wings, nose and belly of Atlantis have no areas of concern and have been cleared for re-entry in just over a week.