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American Morning

Second Spacewalk Takes Place

Aired April 24, 2001 - 11:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Two astronauts from space shuttle "Endeavour" are strolling around in space again today. Now, as we can see, American Scott Parazynski and Canadian Chris Hadfield have ventured outside the shuttle to secure a robot arm on to the international space station. This is their second walk this week.

NASA engineer Phil West joins us now on the phone from Johnston Space Center in Houston, Texas, to talk some more about what's going on. Good morning.

PHIL WEST, NASA ENGINEER: Good morning, Leon.

HARRIS: All right. Now we've got some recorded pictures because we can't get any live pictures right now, but we've recorded some pictures about -- of the spacewalk a while ago. So give us idea what it is we're looking look at right now.

WEST: Sure. Well, you're actually seeing the first two robot arms -- well, the first Canadian robot arms in space, the Canadarm2 and Canadarm1 are preparing for a hand-off that's going to happen tomorrow. And there are two spacewalkers there you can see up in upper right. You can see Scott Parazynski in the lower left. That's the Canadian astronaut. Chris Hadfield. Here's a helmet-cam view. This is from Chris's camera. We call it this Chriscam. It's on the side of the space station.

HARRIS: You know, we love that name, too. We've been talking about that all morning.

WEST: Yeah, that's great. That's the side of the space station. There are some -- a connecting module there between some of the components of the space station and, of course, what they're doing is hooking up cables that connect this new Canadarm to make it operate properly.

And, tomorrow, what will happen is the one Canadarm -- Canadarm2 will hand off an object to the other Canadarm on the space shuttle "Endeavour" for the first robotic hand-off in space.

HARRIS: Oh, my goodness. That should be a great picture, too.

WEST: It will be a cool day.

HARRIS: Now what is it -- what exactly is -- are these Canadarms attached to?

WEST: Right now, one of them's contacted to the space station. You can see that on the left-hand side. And then the boom coming on the lower part of the picture there is the one that's connected back to the space shuttle. We've got to put the -- the packing crate that the one -- that the space station arm came up in -- we've got to put that backing crate back in the space shuttle cargo base. So that's what they'll be exchanging tomorrow.

HARRIS: OK. So explain to us, though, why is it that this -- this space- arm-to-space-arm hand-off is so important?

WEST: Well, it's the first time we'll be doing this complex of a maneuver in space, for one. And, of course, the space-station is an enormous vehicle that we're building out in orbit. Very complex to put together, and as you -- as you do that, you've got to learn how to do these things well.

So this is sort of our first practice session to hand something off from one robot to the other in space. So that's one reason it's very important, of course.

HARRIS: All right. Now we're looking at what is a live picture. What is this?

WEST: Yeah. Now you're -- of course, we're in the nighttime now. The astronauts go through a day and night cycle every 90 minutes in space. So they've got to turn their lights on. That bright spot there is the light coming off of one of the astronaut's helmet -- helmets at the top of their head there, and they're at -- connecting to -- they're working on some cables there that connect the "Destiny" laboratory module to that robot arm.

HARRIS: Now when they do pass into night portion of their -- their orbit every single time, when they do this work outside, does it get absolutely pitch dark out there?

WEST: There's reflection off of some of the -- the parts of the vehicle, from the lights outside, and -- of course, so the -- so it's -- I wouldn't say that it's completely pitch black. There's -- there's lights around that provide reflections, but, certainly, it's very dark. You've got to have light with you to work. That's for sure.

HARRIS: So the shuttle then becomes like a miniature moon for these people.

WEST: Yeah. Well, that's true. Yeah, we reflect some things off there.

HARRIS: There you go. Miniature space lesson there.

WEST: Right.

HARRIS: Science lesson for all of us on that. As I understand it -- we were talking to our Miles O'Brien a while ago, and he was saying that, in preparation for this, for each hour they spend doing what they're doing up there, they had to spend 10 hours underwater here on earth.

WEST: Yeah. You ever sat on a beach ball, Leon? You -- you sit on a beach ball, and it wants to float and push you up, right.

HARRIS: Yeah.

WEST: Well, an astronaut in a spacesuit is basically a beach ball underwater. They want to float. So we hang weights off of them so they neither float nor sink underwater, and they become what we call weightless or simulated -- they become in simulated weightlessness, and that gives them a practice point of view for their spacewalk. Of course, when they get up there, the divers are not up there to hand them the tools and things like that. So it's a little bit different.

HARRIS: Well, how much longer will they be out there?

WEST: Well, they'll be out for another for another probably three to four hours, we expect, and, of course, we'll be doing a number of spacewalks for the space station. Of course, as I said, enormous vehicle.

In fact, you can go to spaceflight.nasa.gov and see where it will fly over your home, and I know there's a sighting opportunity tomorrow night in Atlanta. You can go outside Leon at about 9:00 and look at to the South. At 9:02 p.m., it should fly over, and it should be quite bright if you've got a clear night.

HARRIS: Well, that's, of course, depending upon the kind of air we have in Atlanta.

WEST: Right.

HARRIS: You know how that goes from time to time.

WEST: Right.

HARRIS: So have they hit the most complicated part of this particular mission yet?

WEST: Well, I think the best part is the fact that we've already got this arm installed, and it's going to stay on the space station now. The -- certainly, there's some complex parts ahead with this hand-off tomorrow and the transfer of things they've got going on inside the vehicle.

But, certainly, the original attachment of this arm, when it first took its baby steps off of its packing crate on to the space station, was probably all the moment -- the moment we all wanted to see, and that's already happened. So, yeah, we're excited about how things are going. HARRIS: That's fascinating. Obviously, what we're looking at now may not be all that live a picture. It's called -- we've got it labeled. It's live, but it's been frozen.

WEST: Right. It's still to come done on a different ComLink that we have, so that's why it looks like it's a still image.

HARRIS: Got you. Ex -- can you explain for the folks how it is that this video that we've been seeing from the Chriscam -- how that does get routed back down here to earth, because we -- we've been fascinated by the fact that we can't get microwave shots from parts of town here, but we can get shots live -- great, clear pictures all the way from space.

WEST: And they're pretty clear, aren't they? Our engineers are pretty excited about that here, those folks that worked on that. Well, what happens is -- it goes off of the helmet via a wireless system to antennas that are placed in the shuttle's payload bay and, from there, routed to a -- an antenna system that sends it up to a satellite up in what we call geosynchronous orbit.

You guys at CNN Ä- you use geosynchronous satellite orbits all the time to balance satellite signals all around the world. It comes back down to the ground. It may bounce off another satellite depending on whether things are, but it comes down to ground station and then routed over to Mission Control, sent up on another satellite, and you guys pick it up off of our NASA transponder again back up at geosync. So you're going to bounce off a lot of different things before you see it.

HARRIS: That's great. And it -- it still comes in crystal clear. Obviously then, it's all digital, correct?

WEST: Well, in fact, some of those parts are digital. Some are analog. It depends on what part of the system it's transferring through. Now the space station has got a lot of television that can come down from it, and that is -- is digitally compressed, but it's still pretty high quality. So you'll be seeing a lot of different imagery from the space station in the coming weeks and months.

And, of course, the three astronauts that are on board the space station are glad to have these visitors, as anybody would. When you've been up there for a while, it's nice to have a friendly face to shake hands with or give a hug and enjoy a -- share a meal with. So they're going to be -- they're enjoying that as well as getting a lot of work done inside to transfer all these logistic supplies and experiments that we'll be doing -- that we'll be working with on the space station because that's really why we're building this laboratory.

HARRIS: Good deal. Listen -- Phil, thanks much. Phil West joining us from NASA, the -- it's actually the Johnson Space Center in Houston, explaining to us what's been going on up above our heads. That's been fascinating.

And, of course, once again, Phil just gave us that Web site if you want to find out, folks, when the shuttle is going to be passing over your head so you can look outside and see it, it's spacewalk.nasa.gov. spacewalk.nasa.gov. You can check out that Web site and find out.

PHILLIPS: And we can check it out tomorrow, right.

HARRIS: Yeah.

PHILLIPS: Nine o'clock.

HARRIS: Right. Actually -- correction -- spaceflight.nasa.gov -- spaceflight.

PHILLIPS: There we go.

HARRIS: There you go.

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