CHAPTER 18 DAY IN THE LIFE: RISKY AND REWARDING SPACEWALKS—SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION STS-120/ISS-10A 330 The team predicted the EVA would be fairly long. The EVA team in the control center had to balance reserving the consumables of the spacesuit with the criticality of having Parazynski (and his helmet camera) watch deploy of the array. After a lot of discussion about the suit consumables while Parazynski cut the guidewire and installed the cufflinks, the team decided enough spacesuit consumables remained to have the EVA crew watch as the array successfully deployed. The spacewalk ended up with a duration of 7 hours 19 minutes, which was not too exceptional, due to quick work by the crew to clean everything at the end of the EVA. The crew even managed to retrieve the two suspect foot restraints so that they could be inspected inside for sharp edges. The tools worked great, and Parazynski used the hockey stick like his “best friend” to keep the array at a safe distance. During the EVA, a pair of needle nose pliers was lost overboard (i.e., floated away from the ISS) due to the way a tether line was routed. However, the Trajectory Operations Officer quickly analyzed the trajectory of the tool, and determined the pliers did not pose a risk for coming around and hitting the ISS on a later orbit. Weeks later, the team discovered during video review that another tool had been lost—the Russian dinocutters. This loss was not noticed during the mission, which is unusual. The crew and ground team missed double- checking the presence of this tool during the post-EVA tool review, probably due to the last-minute nature of the activity and the need to focus on the end of the mission and shuttle undocking. Also, a camera did not work on that EVA. The camera had the same signature as the camera failure on EVA 2, which was later theorized to be a blanket holding down the shutter button and draining the battery. The boom sensors had been unpowered around 9 hours, but a checkout later confirmed they were working. The array deployed to its highest tension mode (i.e., the regular operational mode for the array) and rotated nominally. It was generating 217 amps, which is 3 amps less than what would be expected normally. This was probably due to damage of some of the cells, but only a small fraction of the power generation capability had been lost. As of this writing, the array repair with its cufflinks has held together well for several years—a testament to those who worked so hard to put it in working order. With this success, the shuttle could undock. The next EVAs were already being put on the plan for the ISS crew, including the deferred stage EVA that Whitson and Malenchencko were to perform after the shuttle departed. The European Columbus module ultimately flew up during the STS-122/ISS-1E mission in February 2008. Looking Back Adaptation was key. Before flight, the team meticulously pre-planned for three spacewalks (one of which was altered in flight to examine a failing truss rotary joint), then added a fourth and fifth spacewalk pre-mission, neither of which was actually executed during that mission. That mission was altered by adding a new spacewalk in flight due to a major failure in a rotary joint. That spacewalk was not executed during the mission either. Ultimately, through an enormous effort by a large technical international community, flight controllers and engineers executed an entirely new spacewalk to repair a damaged solar array. Preparations for the unexecuted EVAs were not wasted, however. That hard work created a solid team that was able to change the spacewalks, in the moment, and execute them as if they had been planned and tested on the ground, preflight. Even though some additional risk was accepted for one of the most critical spacewalks done to date, the flight directors and mission management team ensured that the team was properly ready and no unnecessary risks were taken by the team or the crew. In hindsight, a combination of factors came together in a perfect way to enable this success. For example, the Space Shuttle boom was available, enabling reach to a distant place that would not have been possible before the Columbia accident decisions