Yesterday, the top priority for the spacewalkers, Patrick Forrester and Steven Swanson, was activating a rotating joint on the outpost's newest segment, allowing a new pair of solar wings to track the sun and provide power to the station. The solar arrays were delivered to the space station by Atlantis.
The astronauts also set up a camera stanchion outside the station's newest segment and planned to install a debris shield and a computer network cable between the United States and Russian sides of the space station during the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk.
Flight controllers gave the rotating joint a small test yesterday. A more thorough test to determine whether the solar arrays track the sun was in store today.
Controllers today also plan to test the space station's thrusters, which haven't been used since the malfunction last week of the Russian computers that control orientation and oxygen production.
Atlantis is set to undock tomorrow and land Thursday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Among those returning will be astronaut Sunita Williams, who set a record for the longest space mission by a woman. Williams, who grew up in Needham, Mass., arrived at the space station in December.
Yurchikhin and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov got four of the six computer processors operating again on Friday. The remaining two were brought back online Saturday but then were flipped to standby status so they could be used if needed.
With the exception of an oxygen generator, all of the space station systems that were powered down when the computers failed were back running.
Mission managers will decide after the station's thrusters are put to the test whether Atlantis needs to spend another day at the outpost.
