Italian astronaut Luca
Parmitano, the current commander of the International Space
Station (ISS), was leading one of the most challenging
spacewalks ever on Friday.
The spacewalk is the first of a series of at least four
needed to service the cosmic-particle-hunting Alpha Magnetic
Spectrometer (AMS-02).
It is considered to be the toughest spacewalk series since
work to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, in part because the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a cosmic particle detector, was
never intended to be repaired in space.
Parmitano and his spacewalking partner, NASA astronaut Andrew
Morgan, went outside the ISS at around 13:00 Italian time.
They had to get to a hard-to-reach area on top of the
Station's S3 Truss structure between a pair of solar arrays and
radiators.
The entire spacewalk was expected to take around six hours,
but the Italian worked fast and was about one hour ahead of
schedule.
Parmitano, who is widely known by his Twitter name AstroLuca
but has also been nicknamed Luca Skywalker by his fellow
astronauts, is the first European to lead a spacewalk.
The main task of Friday's spacewalk was to remove the Alpha
Magnetic Spectrometer's debris shield.
The spacewalk was broadcast live and the European Space
Agency (ESA) tweeted a video of the moment the debris shield was
taken off and pushed away from the ISS.
"Now it will burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere," the ESA
said.
The debris shield protected the facility from
micro-meteorites.
Parmitano then got to work on installing three handrails for
better access in the next spacewalks.
Morgan worked next to Parmitano, handing him tools and
collecting the insulation material that was being removed.
Bernardo Patti, the ESA Manager of International Space
Station Operations, on Friday confirmed that Parmitano will lead
all of the spacewalks for AMS.
"He is the right person," said Patti.
"He is trained to do them, given his background as an Air
Force test pilot".
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
