Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams, along with her crew mate ISS commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, is out walking in space since morning and finished wrangling tough ammonia cooling lines outside the International Space Station (ISS) as they shift them from a temporary arrangement to their permanent configuration.
The first of three spacewalks in nine days began on Wednesday at 9:14 a.m. CST. The two spacewalkers are supposed to reroute the station's Loop A cooling system into its primary set up. A second cooling loop - Loop B - will be rerouted during February 4 spacewalk.
After returning to Earth in July, Expedition 14 and Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Sunita Williams will hold the NASA astronaut record for longest time in space. Sunita also will have completed the most spacewalks by a woman by the end of February.
By the end of Expedition 14 in April, Lopez-Alegria should lead all astronauts in the number of spacewalks and the amount of time spent spacewalking. Lopez-Alegria will have set that record just months earlier.
During spacewalk Wednesday, NASA astronauts were running low on time and spacesuit battery power, so had to stop any extra tasks - known as "get-aheads" - at the end of first spacewalk outside the ISS.
The astronauts are stowing a pair of fluid lines that they stripped from an unneeded reservoir of spare ammonia coolant to complete the final major task of their spacewalk.
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