Spacewalking Astronauts Finish Extensive, Tricky Cable Job

An anonymous reader writes news about a three-day cable job completed outside the International Space Station. "Spacewalking astronauts successfully completed a three-day cable job outside the International Space Station on Sunday, routing several-hundred feet of power and data lines for new crew capsules commissioned by NASA. It was the third spacewalk in just over a week for Americans Terry Virts and Butch Wilmore, and the quickest succession of spacewalks since NASA's former shuttle days. The advance work was needed for the manned spacecraft under development by Boeing and SpaceX. A pair of docking ports will fly up later this year, followed by the capsules themselves, with astronauts aboard, in 2017."

Comments

Was one of them named ...

[CaptainDork]

... Larry?

Re:Why new cabling?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cargo Dragons do not dock independently. They basically fly close to the station and are then grappled by the space station robotic arm, which then maneuvers the docking port into alignment.

The new Dragons (manned and unmanned) need a special docking system for alignment and approach to docking.

P.S. Where is the login screen for Slashdot? Please don't tell me I need a Google+ account to log in.

Re: Why new cabling?

[Zeussy]

Also the crew capsules will be staying docked for months at a time. The Dragon v2 is not going to have big extending solar arrays like the current dragon, instead it will have some solar panels wrapped around the trunk. While it is docked and can't keep its attitude aligned to keep these panels in the sun it will need power from somewhere.