Spacewalkers to tackle ripped solar wing

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA sketched out plans on Wednesday for a hastily choreographed spacewalk with an astronaut dangling at the end of an extension boom to try to save a critical power wing of the International Space Station.

The job, targeted for Friday, will fall to veteran spacewalker Scott Parazynski, who will try to install a makeshift bracket to take the load off hinges that broke while the 110-foot (33-metre) solar power panel was being extended on Tuesday.

The panel is attached to an 18-ton truss that was moved to the far end of the station's frame. It tore as it neared the end of its 110-foot extension.

"One of the agonies was how do we get to the work site," NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters.

The answer, engineers hope, will be the 50-foot (15-metre) extension boom NASA added to the space shuttle's regular cargo after the 2003 Columbia accident. The boom doubles the length of the shuttle's robot arm so it can inspect the ship's heat shield for damage prior to its return through the atmosphere for landing.

But the boom has proved handy for putting spacewalkers in hard-to-reach areas for minor repairs on the shuttle.

NASA will attempt to use the boom on the station's robotic crane to place Parazynski within arm's reach of the station's tattered wing.

Fixing the panel has become the primary goal for the rest of the shuttle's 15-day mission, which had already been extended for an unplanned spacewalk to inspect a contaminated joint that rotates another pair of solar arrays to track the sun for power.