Spacewalkers Install Video Camera

SPACE CENTER, Houston, Nov. 8 -- Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev successfully completed their mission's first spacewalk Monday. They installed a new video camera on the P1 truss structure and jettisoned a probe attached to the top of the P6 truss during the 5-hour, 22-minute spacewalk.

Commander Bill McArthur (lower right) and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev inspect a camera assembly they installed on a truss segment of the space station. (Image: NASA TV)

The camera will be used after arrival of the P3 and P4 truss segment during STS-115, station assembly flight 12A, next year. It will help astronauts add new segments onto the orbiting station; specifically, it will offer visual perspective to arm operator Steve MacLean, a Canadian astronaut, as he maneuvers the truss segment for installation.

McArthur and his Russian crewmate spent about 2 hours, 10 minutes on the camera installation. They also detached a floating potential probe -- an old environmental probe that hadn't worked in at least two years -- and tossed it into the void about 210 miles above Earth. NASA said it should burn up in the atmosphere in 100 days. The astronauts also worked on retrieving a failed remote joint motor controller and removing a remote power controller module, the mobile transporter, which moves along railroad-like tracks on the station's main truss.

This was the first US Quest airlock-based spacewalk since an Expedition 6 spacewalk by Commander Ken Bowersox and NASA Science Officer Don Pettit on April 8, 2003.

For more information, visit: www.nasa.gov