Spacewalkers Moving Ahead With Dextre, Tranquility Work

After going back to the airlock to retrieve insulation and jumpers to be stored for use in a later spacewalk, both Bob Behnken and Nicholas Patrick now will come together at the special purpose dexterous manipulator, or Dextre, to remove its orbital replacement unit temporary platform, a storage platform that allows the robot to carry spare parts. They will retrieve two handles from storage and install them on the robot and the platform, then work together to release the four fasteners connecting the platform to the robot. Behnken will carry the platform to a stowage bin on the left side of the station’s truss, where it will be available for use as a backup to a new enhanced platform that will be installed on Dextre during the STS-132 mission.

While that work is going on, Terry Virts and Kay Hire have unloaded Tranquility from Endeavour’s cargo bay and are installing it on the Unity node. Once installed, Behnken and Patrick will begin hooking it up. Patrick will begin by connecting Tranquility’s heater cables to Unity to provide a temporary power supply. Behnken, meanwhile, will connect eight avionics cables between the nodes.