Astronauts take 2nd spacewalk for cable, lube job
Spacewalking astronauts breezed through a lube and cable job outside the International Space Station on Wednesday.
It was the second spacewalk in five days for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts. In all, three spacewalks are planned in just over a week to prepare the orbiting lab for future American crew capsules; the final spacewalk in the series is this weekend.
Wilmore and Virts installed two more cables, for a two-day total of 364 feet (111 meters). They unreeled the first eight cables Saturday.
Then Virts began the long, tedious lubrication of screws, brackets and tracks on the end of the space station's giant robot arm. The snares had gotten a bit creaky over the past year, and engineers hoped the grease would make operations smoother.
