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Japanese robot arm flexed for first time today BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: June 7, 2008 The Discovery astronauts unlimbered the Kibo laboratory module's Japanese robot arm today and prepared spacesuits and equipment for a third and final spacewalk Sunday to collect debris samples from a solar array rotary joint and install a tank of pressurized nitrogen for the space station's ammonia coolant loops. "Preparations for the third walk are going great," said spacewalker Michael Fossum. "We've got the suits checked out and just about ready to go, all our tools packed up and after a few final procedures reviews, we'll be ready to go out the door tomorrow." Mission managers early today approved a plan for Fossum collect samples of apparent debris he saw inside the station's left-side solar alpha rotary joint during the crew's second spacewalk Thursday. The space station is equipped with two SARJ gears, one on either side of the lab's main power truss, that are designed to rotate outboard solar arrays like giant paddle wheels to track the sun. The right side SARJ has suffered considerable damage to the surfaces of the 10-foot-wide drive gear that are gripped by 12 three-roller trundle bearings. The left-side SARJ is operating normally, but Fossum spotted buildups of grease during an inspection Thursday. Photographs also indicted small amounts of an unknown material dusting the outer edge of the drive gear. Engineers believe the grease may be coming from one or more of the trundle bearings the gear rolls through and it may be beneficial in slowing or preventing the sort of surface breakdown that has damaged the right-side gear. In any case, the grease is not thought to be a serious issue. A senior space station manager said in an email grease had been seen during an earlier inspection during shuttle mission STS-120 in October 2007 as well as during ground testing. "Pictures after the EVA during (assembly mission) 10A did show us a similar appearance," he said. "The pictures from this EVA are of higher resolution and allow us to more definitively conclude it to be grease from the rollers. This is not unexpected as it was seen during our ground life tests." The dust-like material was somewhat of a surprise, Fossum said, but it is nothing like the damage and debris seen in the right-side SARJ. "I don't believe it looks at all like the starboard side," Fossum told a reporter today. "The starboard side definitely has metal shavings that show up and you can see some damage to the metal surface. There's just some things look different on the side we looked at the other day, the port side. It really looks to me like a little bit of grease, which is not a terrible big surprise when you're dealing with a bearing surface. "But it was not expected. Through the photographs, there might be a little bit of dusting of some other deposits around there so right now, and this plan is changing by the hour, tomorrow we plan to go out with a little bit of special tape and collect some of that dust from around the edge of the bearing. But really, that bearing looks to be in pretty darn good shape." During today's work aboard the space station, the astronauts continued outfitting and activating the Japanese Kibo lab module and re-establishing connections between Kibo and a smaller logistics module that was mounted atop the new laboratory on Friday. Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide also moved Kibo's robot arm, which will be used in the future to manipulate externally mounted payloads and experiments, for the first time to give Fossum and Ronald Garan access to launch locks that will be removed during Sunday's spacewalk. The arm "was too close in the launch configuration to the module itself so that Ron and Mike cannot access those launch locks," Hoshide said in a NASA interview. "So what we're trying to do is to deploy it just a little bit, and that's called the 'initial deploy,' so they can access. We'll have them take off the launch locks and then we'll do a final deploy so that's away from the module and then later in the mission we'll do a checkout of the arm, making sure that the brakes are working correctly and then move it into a storage configuration." Late today, flight controllers told the astronauts that analysis of about 70 800-millimeter telephoto images of two leading edge wing panels that the crew took Friday showed the reinforced carbon carbon panels were in good shape. The pictures were taken after data from an impact sensors behind the panels showed a spike during final approach to the station Monday. Hoshide and shuttle commander Mark Kelly will take a call from Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda at 7:02 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision J of the NASA television schedule): EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT 06/07/08 06:02 AM...06...13...00...Crew wakeup 08:02 AM...06...15...00...ISS daily planning conference 08:52 AM...06...15...50...Shuttle robot arm maneuver 09:02 AM...06...16...00...Airlock preps for EVA-3 09:27 AM...06...16...25...Middeck transfers 09:47 AM...06...16...45...EVA-3: Tools configured 10:27 AM...06...17...25...Kibo robot (JRMS) arm setup 11:17 AM...06...18...15...JRMS hold/release mechanism test 12:17 PM...06...19...15...JRMS initial deploy 01:32 PM...06...20...30...ISS crew meal 02:02 PM...06...21...00...Crew media interviews 02:22 PM...06...21...20...Shuttle crew meal 03:22 PM...06...22...20...Logistics module vestibule outfitting 05:02 PM...07...00...00...Station robot arm maneuver 05:27 PM...07...00...25...EVA-3: Procedures review 07:02 PM...07...02...00...Japanese VIP event 07:30 PM...07...02...28...Mission status briefing on NTV 07:57 PM...07...02...55...EVA-3: Mask pre-breathe/tool config 08:30 PM...07...03...28...VIP event replay with English translation; on NTV 08:42 PM...07...03...40...EVA-3: Airlock depress to 10.2 psi 09:02 PM...07...04...00...ISS crew sleep begins 09:32 PM...07...04...30...STS crew sleep begins 10:00 PM...07...04...58...Daily video highlights reel on NTV
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