Posted: Fri, Jun 14, 2002, 8:02 AM ET (1202 GMT)
Two astronauts successfully replaced a faulty wrist joint on the International Space Station's robot arm during a seven-hour spacewalk Thursday. Franklin Chang-Diaz and Philippe Perrin, making their third and final spacewalk of the STS-111 mission, removed a faulty wrist joint on the Canadarm2 robot arm and replaced it with a new model brought to the station by the shuttle. Initial tests showed that the arm was functioning well with none of the wrist problems it had previously been experiencing. This spacewalk was added relatively late in the planning of the mission after station and shuttle managers decided earlier this year that the wrist joint on the arm needed to be replaced. The shuttle crew will being to wrap up their stay at the station on Friday, including undocking the Leonardo cargo module from the station and rebirthing it in Endeavour's cargo bay. The shuttle is scheduled to undock from the station on Saturday.
