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No obvious change after astronaut exercise session BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: December 15, 2006 Trying to succeed where robotic jostling failed, German astronaut Thomas Reiter, wrapping up a six-month stay aboard the international space station, worked out with a resistive exerice device today in a bid to impart enough vibration to shake loose a hung-up solar array. While past exercise sessions in the Unity module directly below the stalled solar array were known to trigger oscillations in the fragile blankets, Reiter's workout today did not shake the array enough to have any immediately obvious effects. "I see no change at all in the configuration," shuttle commander Mark Polansky observed. "Of course, I'm very sorry to hear that," Reiter joked. "I was training for that for half a year." "We'll give you the Silver Medal for that, Thomas," astronaut Terry Virts radioed from mission control in Houston. Reiter made several more attempts, but no changes were apparent to the untrained eye. In a news briefing late Thursday, space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said Leroy Chiao, a former commander of the outpost, was able to shake the P6 solar arrays doing squats with a bungie cord resistive exercise system mounted in the Unity module. The shaking was not intentional and the exercise routine was changed to avoid such jostling in the future. But Suffredini thought it was worth a try today on the off chance it might free a hung-up guide wire preventing the P6-4B solar blankets from retracting smoothly. Earlier today, flight controllers attempted to shake the blankets by rotating a central mast 10 degrees one way, pausing and then returning to the starting point. Again, no obvious improvements were immediately apparent. The P6-4B solar array currently is retracted about half way and engineers say it can safely remain in that configuration for at least the next three to four months. NASA managers are debating whether to add a fourth, unplanned spacewalk to Discovery's mission to free the blankets or whether to hand the work off to the station astronauts or a future shuttle crew. If a spacewalk is added to Discovery's mission, it would occur Sunday, after a final re-wiring spacewalk Saturday, or on Monday. Discovery's landing would remain targeted for next Thursday and a planned post-undocking heat shield inspection would be canceled.
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