Two Russian space station astronauts took a spacewalk today to complete a job left undone last month, but ran into new trouble.
Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy quickly got one of two cameras installed outside the International Space Station, a task requiring multiple power connections. Everything checked out well, unlike the post-Christmas spacewalk where no data came from the cameras. The problem was traced to indoor cabling and thought to be fixed.
But the second camera did not provide good data to ground controllers after its installation.
Ryazanskiy redid the electrical connections, with no luck. He spotted no damage.
"I put everything in place as it used to be, maybe even better," Ryazanskiy radioed. "I think it's much better." The spacewalkers worked so hard that Russian Mission Control outside Moscow urged them early in the spacewalk to "get your breath."
"We'll force ourselves to rest," one of the spacewalkers replied in Russian.
Images from these new cameras will be distributed by the Canadian company that owns them, UrtheCast Corp.
UrtheCast said it will post video on its website and sell images. The company envisions customers wanting video feeds for environmental, agricultural and humanitarian purposes.
The company expects that the system should be fully operational by the middle of the year.
The four other space station astronauts, two Americans, one Japanese and another Russian, monitored the spacewalk from inside.
