Space Station getting a back yard shed
Crew installing spare parts platform outside the station
What do you call a little building, next to a big one, that holds spare parts for the equipment and mechanisms inside the big one?
The Endeavour astronauts are working to robotically install a 7,000-pound equipment storage platform on the international space station today, a complex procedure requiring tight choreography between the shuttle and station robot arms.
Educator-astronaut Barbara Morgan, assisted by Tracy Caldwell, used Endeavour's 50-foot-long robot arm to lock onto a grapple fixture on External Storage Platform No. 3 around 9:13 a.m. She began slowly pulling the platform from its perch in the orbiter's cargo bay a half hour later. Shuttle pilot Charles Hobaugh, operating the station's arm from a work station inside the Destiny laboratory module, was standing by to latch onto ESP-3 for the actual installation on the left side of the station's solar power truss.