On board the orbiting Mir space station, American astronaut Michael Foale and his Russian colleague Wednesday checked their equipment and rehearsed the plan for history’s longest U.S.-Russian spacewalk to patch the holes in the Spektr module.
Only a final NASA go-ahead is needed to allow Foale to perform Saturday’s six-hour walk with Mir commander Anatoly Solovyov, the world’s most experienced spacewalker.
Foale’s chief task will be to pitch in with repairs needed after Mir’s June 25 collision with an unmanned supply ship. Unlike earlier spacewalks, which were largely scripted while astronauts were still in ground training, NASA officials have tried to help Foale wing it from afar.
The men will try to locate and patch holes in Spektr, damaged in the collision. They also need to realign solar panels to restore more power to the orbital station, and they may plug an open docking port and retrieve an American scientific experiment.
“It’s a pretty long shopping list,” Jerry Miller, NASA spacewalks director, said from Russian Mission Control near Moscow. “It looks as if there’s not going to be time enough for everything.”
