Atlantis astronauts play dead in historic spacewalk

Thomas Jones and Robert Curbeam outside Atlantis on Wednesday

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JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas -- Two astronauts wrapped the 100th spacewalk in U.S. history after playing dead Wednesday in a mock disaster test.

Astronauts Thomas Jones and Robert Curbeam Jr. took turns pretending to be dead while the other practiced pulling an incapacitated crewman the length of the payload bay and back into the crew compartment.

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Both agreed that a method called the "daisy chain" was best, where the able-bodied astronaut pulls the other along behind him on a long line made by joining their two safety tethers together.

The emergency drill came at the pair's third and final trip outside Atlantis during the shuttle mission to install the science laboratory Destiny on the new International Space Station.

Gemini astronaut Edward White II made NASA's first spacewalk in 1965. His excursion lasted 21 minutes. Wednesday's outing was 5 1/2 hours long.

Before going back inside, Jones and Curbeam paid tribute to White -- who died in a launch pad fire in 1967 -- and the other Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and shuttle astronauts who have performed spacewalks over the decades. Moonwalks are included in the tally.

"And here we are now," Jones said. "We think in the years to come in the very near future, we'll see not only the construction of the space station completed, but spacewalkers will take their place not only in low-Earth orbit, but back on the moon and back on the asteroids and perhaps even to Mars."

'Out of this world'

They performed the bulk of the mission's objective on two previous spacewalks, mounting and installing the $1.4 billion Destiny on space station Alpha.

During Wednesday's excursion, Jones and Curbeam attached a spare communications antenna to Alpha and double-checked cables and a docking port that they attached to Destiny during the second spacewalk.

Working some nine stories above the shuttle, they inspected the station's 240-foot solar paneled "wings." One of the wings failed to deploy properly on an earlier mission and NASA hoped their analysis and the photographs taken would yield a reason.

Racing through the heavens at five miles a second, Jones paused long enough to comment on the moon, which hung just below the solar arrays.

"It's just gorgeous," he told his crew mates aboard Atlantis. "Guys, the view is out of this world up here."

"That's an understatement," Curbeam said

On Tuesday, Alpha reached two milestones: It sped around the Earth guided by solar rather than rocket power -- and by Americans rather than Russians.

"We've reached another benchmark," radioed Mission Control.

Station flexes solar wings

On the cue of Mission Control in Houston, Texas, computers inside Destiny sent commands to four gyroscopes that were delivered by shuttle astronauts last autumn. The gyroscopes, in turn, took over the steering of the space station from fuel-guzzling Russian thrusters.

The computers and gyroscope motors were powered by electricity from giant solar wings that were installed in December. The gyroscopes help the space station save rocket thruster fuel, which is costly and burdensome to deliver.

When the gyroscopes were in control, so was NASA's Mission Control in Houston. Until that moment, flight controllers in Russia had always been in charge.

The station will alternate between thrusters and gyros for now, but once NASA has thoroughly tested the new system and declared it operational, the moment-to-moment command of the station will begin to shift from Russia to the United States.

The 800-pound (363-kg) gyros, spinning more than 6,000 times a minute, keep the station pointed in the right direction to collect sunlight for solar power.

The gyros not only are cheaper than the thrusters, they are designed to operate more smoothly and are less likely to upset delicate experiments that NASA and its international partners -- Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada -- plan to conduct on the $100- billion station.

Astronauts prepare to leave Atlantis for their third and last spacewalk

Houston tries to clear the air

Mission directors were trying to solve one problem in setting up Destiny: its carbon dioxide-removal system was not working because of a bad pump.

The five Atlantis astronauts and three Alpha residents had to rely instead on the air purifiers aboard the shuttle and the Russian segments of the space station.

The shuttle's thrusters have been used to boost the altitude of the station several times during the mission. One more reboost is planned before Atlantis departs. The shuttle should conclude its 11-day flight by landing at Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Sunday.

The space station's crew has lived on Alpha since November. They plan to return next month when the shuttle Discovery brings a replacement crew to the outpost.

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