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New ammonia tank removed from shuttle Discovery's bay
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: April 9, 2010


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Spacewalker Clay Anderson resorted to a pry bar early Friday to free a stuck 1,700-pound ammonia coolant tank from its mount in the shuttle Discovery's cargo bay.

Then, with Anderson and Rick Mastracchio manually holding the massive tank, the space station's robot arm latched on and began moving it to a temporary mounting point on the lab's main power truss.

"Clay, good job, man," Mastracchio radioed.

"Yeah, you too," Anderson said.

"Yeah Clay, you did a great job holding that tank steady," someone said.

"I totally agree," said spacewalk coordinator Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger.

"That's what they say," Anderson laughed. "'Git her done.'"

While Anderson cleaned up the payload bay worksite, Mastracchio headed to the Japanese Kibo module to retrieve an experiment package. Both spacewalkers plan to meet the robot arm near the station's airlock to attach a grapple fixture to the ammonia tank.

The arm, driven by Stephanie Wilson and shuttle pilot James Dutton, then will move the tank to a temporary mounting point on the space crane's mobile base station where it will remain until its actual installation during the crew's second spacewalk.

Anderson and Mastracchio, meanwhile, will work to replace a rate gyro assembly, a device that helps the station determine its orientation in space.

Once that work is done, the spacewalkers will focus on a few get-ahead tasks before calling it a day and heading back to the airlock.

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