spacetoday.net: ISS spacewalk set for Thursday

Posted: Wed, Jun 23, 2004, 9:52 AM ET (1352 GMT)
ISS illustration (NASA)

A spacewalk to repair a gyro on the International Space Station is now set for late Thursday, after NASA had announced earlier in the week a one-day delay. On Monday NASA announced the EVA had been delayed from Thursday to not earlier than Friday for unidentified reasons. However, on Tuesday the spacewalk was pushed back to Thursday. Officials revealed that the delay was announced in order to provide time to negotiate on-monetary compensation with Russia for the use of its equipment on the spacewalk. Because conditions for the spacewalk, such as the sun angle, were better on Thursday, NASA and Russia's Federal Space Agency agreed to move the EVA back to Thursday and work out the details of any compensation until after the spacewalk. The EVA is required to repair a faulty gyro used to provide attitude control on the station. Two of the four gyros are not operating, but only one will be repaired during the spacewalk. The EVA had already been delayed a few weeks because of problems with the US-provided spacesuits originally to be used on the spacewalk; the ISS crew of Michael Fincke and Gennady Padalka will use Russian spacesuits instead.