Space station astronauts take spacewalk - Yahoo! News

Space station astronauts take spacewalk - Yahoo! News: "Space station astronauts take spacewalk" CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A pair of space station astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk Tuesday to inspect two defective mechanisms that are hobbling power generation at the orbiting complex. Flight controllers called it a fact-finding mission. Some 200 miles below, NASA was recreating fuel gauge problems that grounded shuttle Atlantis earlier this month. Engineers started filling the spaceship's external tank with liquid hydrogen fuel at daybreak, in a test at the launch pad to pinpoint the nagging trouble. One of the four fuel gauges promptly failed, and two others were not working consistently. The problem could be anywhere in the 100 feet of circuitry between the shuttle and tank, or in the fuel gauges. Atlantis' astronauts were supposed to examine the clogged rotary joint at the international space station. But with the shuttle mission delayed until January, NASA moved up the joint inspection and added another chore to the spacewalk after a second component in the space station's power system failed 1 1/2 weeks ago.