CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The astronauts aboard the linked shuttle and station rested Wednesday for the fourth spacewalk of their mission, a caulking-gun-and-goo test.
“Three down, two to go,” Mission Control told the astronauts in a wake-up message.
Two of the crew will float outside tonight to squirt sal mon-colored goo into the crevices of extra space shuttle thermal tiles that were deliberately damaged for the test. NASA wants to see how well the caulking gun and patching material work, in case they’re ever needed for a real repair.
The tools were developed after the 2003 Columbia disaster. The shuttle was destroyed and all seven astronauts were killed during re-entry because of a hole in the wing.
The shuttle astronauts spent the first half of their mission putting together the space station’s new Canadian robot, Dextre, and installing a Japanese storage compartment that will be followed by Japan’s enormous Kibo lab in May.
During today’s spacewalk, astronauts Michael Foreman and Robert Behnken will work on sample tiles that were carried up in Endeavour’s payload bay.
The experiment was supposed to be conducted during a shuttle flight last fall but was scrapped because of urgent repairs for a ripped solar wing at the international space station.
