Two US astronauts floated outside the International Space Station on Tuesday for a hastily planned spacewalk to replace a computer that failed on Saturday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.Station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Jack Fischer left at around 7:30 a.m. EDT\/1130 GMT as the orbiting outpost sailed 250 miles (400 km) over the Philippine Sea, just south of Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Whitson headed to the center backbone of the station\u2019s exterior framework where the failed computer is located. The 50-pound (23 kg) computer, which is about the size of a microwave oven, is one of two that control equipment, including solar power panels, cooling loops, radiators and robotics gear, on the US side of the station.<\/p>\n
The loss of one of the computers on Saturday did not affect station operations or pose a risk to the crew, but NASA managers wanted to restore a backup as quickly as possible, said mission commentator Rob Navias.<\/p>\n
While Whitson replaced the failed computer, Fischer installed a pair of wireless communications antennas onto the outside of the US Destiny laboratory, one of three research modules aboard the $100 billion station, a project of 15 nations.<\/p>\n
The spacewalk, scheduled to last just 2.5 hours, will move Whitson, a veteran of 10 previous outings, to third on the list of the world\u2019s most experienced spacewalkers, behind Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev and NASA\u2019s Mike Lopez-Alegria.<\/p>\n
Whitson and former station flight engineer Shane Kimbrough installed the failed computer during a March 30 spacewalk.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo insight into what the problem is yet,\u201d NASA spokesman Dan Huot wrote in an email. \u201cLikely won\u2019t know more until someone has the chance to do diagnostics on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two US astronauts floated outside the International Space Station on Tuesday for a hastily planned spacewalk to replace a computer that failed on Saturday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,103],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4341,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4339\/revisions\/4341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}