he, Bowersox, and Budarin were immediately impressed by the size of their new home, how roomy it seemed after they had spent nearly two full days packed into the shuttle’s claustrophobic quarters. It felt as though they had stepped into the foyer of a mansion, or at least the makings of one. Like Pettit and the happy rush he had experienced when he first saw Budarin’s toy bee take flight, the three men were flush with feelings of arrival, sharing the relief that comes at the end of such a long journey.
Relief, but not rest. Aside from unloading tons of supplies from
Endeavour
and trying to make themselves feel a little more at home—Expedition Six took over the station’s three sleeping compartments, about the size of phone booths, from Expedition Five on their first night on board—they also had to pitch in during the installation of the P1 truss, three days of work scheduled to begin the next morning, Tuesday.
Wetherbee, at the controls of the Canadarm, continued his busy assignment by lifting the truss out of the shuttle’s payload bay. Only his grasp kept it from floating into space, and there it dangled, against the black, looking for all its size like a good sneeze might blow it to the edge of the universe. But by using every inch of the Canadarm’s fifty-foot length, Wetherbee was able to bring the truss safely within reach of the station’s own Canadarm, operated by Whitson from inside Destiny. Each kept hold for nearly nine minutes, just to make sure that the handover was true. When Wetherbee let go, Whitson was able to swing the truss into its final position, aligning it end to end with the already installed S0 truss, the station’s primary vertebrae. It fit together seamlessly. Using the computers inside station, Pettit commanded a claw on one truss to grab a bar on the other, tacking it in place. Now the connection had to be made complete.
Lopez-Alegria and John Herrington had spent most of their day getting ready to head outside. They had already pulled on their white spacesuits, climbed into one of the station’s airlocks, let the oxygen out, and opened the hatch. Now they took a deep breath and leaped out into the darkness. With the earth spinning fast beneath their feet (a sight that had the unnerving effect of making them feel every so often as though they were falling), they first worked at connecting the P1 truss’s power, data, and fluid lines, critical if its girders were to keep from freezing.
Also attached to the truss like a parasite was something called the Crew and Equipment Translation Aid (CETA), a kind of flatbed mining cart that, in the future, would run along rails stretched the length of the completed truss. (It was designed to help spacewalkers lug heavy equipment from one side of station to the other.) The cart had been locked into place to keep it from moving during the shuttle’s flight and the truss’s installation, and now those locks needed to be released. While they were at it, Herrington and Lopez-Alegria removed some of the pinlike hardware that had kept the truss itself in place during launch.
Lastly, they attached an antenna that would pass along signals from the cameras that were sometimes strapped to the side of an astronaut’s helmet, especially when he had been ordered outside. Already those cameras had provided some of the most terrific images of earth: when the view cut from an astronaut’s gloved hand, tightening a bolt with an ordinary wrench, to the whole of Australia, say, baked golden brown under a hot sun, it was almost hard to make sense of the scene, the mundane and the spectacular suddenly side by side. It was like watching an electrician connecting a wire and flicking a breaker that somehow turned on the moon.
But up there, for them, it was starting to feel like just one more job that needed doing—not routine, but on glamour’s wide spectrum, more routine than red carpet. Astronauts have a higher threshold for drama than most of the rest of
Relief, but not rest. Aside from unloading tons of supplies from
Endeavour
and trying to make themselves feel a little more at home—Expedition Six took over the station’s three sleeping compartments, about the size of phone booths, from Expedition Five on their first night on board—they also had to pitch in during the installation of the P1 truss, three days of work scheduled to begin the next morning, Tuesday.
Wetherbee, at the controls of the Canadarm, continued his busy assignment by lifting the truss out of the shuttle’s payload bay. Only his grasp kept it from floating into space, and there it dangled, against the black, looking for all its size like a good sneeze might blow it to the edge of the universe. But by using every inch of the Canadarm’s fifty-foot length, Wetherbee was able to bring the truss safely within reach of the station’s own Canadarm, operated by Whitson from inside Destiny. Each kept hold for nearly nine minutes, just to make sure that the handover was true. When Wetherbee let go, Whitson was able to swing the truss into its final position, aligning it end to end with the already installed S0 truss, the station’s primary vertebrae. It fit together seamlessly. Using the computers inside station, Pettit commanded a claw on one truss to grab a bar on the other, tacking it in place. Now the connection had to be made complete.
Lopez-Alegria and John Herrington had spent most of their day getting ready to head outside. They had already pulled on their white spacesuits, climbed into one of the station’s airlocks, let the oxygen out, and opened the hatch. Now they took a deep breath and leaped out into the darkness. With the earth spinning fast beneath their feet (a sight that had the unnerving effect of making them feel every so often as though they were falling), they first worked at connecting the P1 truss’s power, data, and fluid lines, critical if its girders were to keep from freezing.
Also attached to the truss like a parasite was something called the Crew and Equipment Translation Aid (CETA), a kind of flatbed mining cart that, in the future, would run along rails stretched the length of the completed truss. (It was designed to help spacewalkers lug heavy equipment from one side of station to the other.) The cart had been locked into place to keep it from moving during the shuttle’s flight and the truss’s installation, and now those locks needed to be released. While they were at it, Herrington and Lopez-Alegria removed some of the pinlike hardware that had kept the truss itself in place during launch.
Lastly, they attached an antenna that would pass along signals from the cameras that were sometimes strapped to the side of an astronaut’s helmet, especially when he had been ordered outside. Already those cameras had provided some of the most terrific images of earth: when the view cut from an astronaut’s gloved hand, tightening a bolt with an ordinary wrench, to the whole of Australia, say, baked golden brown under a hot sun, it was almost hard to make sense of the scene, the mundane and the spectacular suddenly side by side. It was like watching an electrician connecting a wire and flicking a breaker that somehow turned on the moon.
But up there, for them, it was starting to feel like just one more job that needed doing—not routine, but on glamour’s wide spectrum, more routine than red carpet. Astronauts have a higher threshold for drama than most of the rest of
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