What happens on the day of that first space walk?
On flight day four, one of the busiest days of the flight is also one of the most exciting. We’ll get up first thing in the morning. Myself and Chris will be getting into our liquid-cooled undergarments and putting on biomedical sensors and things of that nature. Meanwhile upstairs, Jeff Ashby’s going to be flying the robotic arm. And, it’s a very challenging task to, first of all, remove the Spacelab Pallet that houses the space station robotic arm and a UHF antenna that we’ll also install. He has to pick that up and maneuver it out in front of the nose of the orbiter and install it on top of the Lab. The tolerances the arm has to fly are very tight. Visibility is somewhat limited, but we think that with the various views that we can command from the shuttle and using the Space Vision System he’ll be able to do this quite nicely. Once Jeff has installed the Spacelab Pallet onboard the Lab, he’ll ungrapple the arm, back away and drive the arm back down towards the airlock, where Chris
