Final Spacewalk Breaks Canadian Record
Posted August 18, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
One small step for man, one giant leap for Canadians.
Astronaut Dave Williams began his third spacewalk on Saturday morning, and as he left the hatch he set a record for the number of spacewalks by a Canadian.
Chris Hadfield made two in 2001.
NASA began the spacewalk about 40 minutes earlier than scheduled and shortened the length of time he would be in space by two hours, to a total of four and a half hours.
This is so the shuttle can land a day earlier, in hopes of avoiding being caught in hurricane Dean.
Williams is also set to break a second record – most time a Canadian has spent free-floating in space.
When he returns to the station, he will have spent around 17-and-a-half hours in space, compared to Hadfield’s 14 hours and 56 minutes.
Williams and Clay Anderson are installing a shuttle inspection boom stand to the station and securing an antenna mount.
Hurricane Dean was headed toward Mexico ‘s Yucatan Peninsula . If it looked like the storm might veer toward Houston , Mission Control could be forced to relocate to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida .
Shuttle managers also decided Friday to put off fuel-tank preparations for the next launch until engineers decide how to best solve the latest foam-loss problem.
A piece of foam, ice or a combination of both broke off the tank during Endeavour’s launch last week and shot into the shuttle’s belly, carving out a deep gouge that triggered a week of furious thermal analyses.
