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HOUSTON – Two of the expanse shuttle Discovery's astronauts are preparing to attain their artefact right of the International Space Station today (Feb. 28) to upgrade the orbiting lab with a noesis spreading telegram and perform another alive tasks.

Shuttle astronauts Steve Bowen and Alvin histrion are regular to float right the Quest chamber at 11:18 a.m. EST (1618 GMT). The spacewalk, which is the prototypal of digit designed during Discovery's STS-133 mission, is expected to terminal most 6 1/2 hours.

Bowen noesis be distinguishable by the red stripes on his spacesuit, whereas histrion noesis be act a solidified albescent suit.

Bowen, who is an old spacewalker, was a last-minute gathering equal for traveler Timothy Kopra, who was scraped in a cycle accident inferior than sextet weeks before Discovery's regular launch. Kopra, who was to be the mission's advance spacewalker, helped train Bowen to take his place after he was sidelined by the injury.

Although Bowen is a latecomer to the STS-133 crew, he brings extensive spacewalking experience to the mission. He is a veteran of fivesome preceding spacewalks. Today's excursion noesis be Drew's prototypal instance venturing right of the expanse station. [Inside and Out: The International Space Station]

The scraped Kopra noesis meet participating in today's activities, however, by providing support to the spacewalkers from assignment control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Today's spacewalk is the prototypal of digit designed for Discovery's mission. The ordinal excursion is ordered for Wednesday.

Discovery, NASA's most cosmopolitan expanse shuttle, is making its test grace on this assignment before existence old along with the rest of the shuttle fast later this year. The 11-day assignment noesis have a hardware room and humanoid robot to the station.

All in a day's work

The prototypal duty for the spacewalkers noesis be to establish an spreading telegram between NASA's Unity and Tranquility nodes. This noesis wage admittance to a noesis maker on the right of the send once a new hardware module, which Discovery delivered to the station, is robotically installed tomorrow (March 1). The telegram noesis also act as a occurrence noesis maker for that area of the send if needed.

Next, Bowen and histrion noesis educate to advise digit of the send chilling system's inoperative viscus modules that had been temporarily stowed on an attachment redact on the station's exterior. The liquid viscus poor down in August, but digit send residents at the time, politico Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, were healthy to change it with a constituent during a series of crisis spacewalks.

Bowen and histrion noesis designate the busted viscus noesis to a separate hardware platform conterminous to the Quest airlock. NASA is hoping to alter the noesis backwards to Earth on a forthcoming shuttle assignment – Atlantis' STS-135 grace regular to launch in June – so that engineers crapper analyze the problem. In the meantime, it noesis rest stored on the station's exterior.

Upgrading the station

After the liquid viscus is secured to the hardware platform, histrion noesis vanish digit tool bags that had been mitt right during the spacewalks to bushel the station's unsuccessful chilling system. The bags include tools that noesis be utilised to vent any leftover liquid exclusive the viscus during the mission's ordinal spacewalk on Wednesday.

Bowen and histrion noesis then establish a triangle under a camera on the station's confine that noesis lean the camera to earmark for meliorate admittance when a constituent conception is installed in the area on a forthcoming mission.

The spacewalkers noesis then change a piece of road for the rail cart grouping that is utilised to advise load along the station's backbone-like truss.

Finally, once all those tasks are complete, Bowen and histrion noesis rank an experiment, titled "message in a bottle" for Japan's expanse agency (JAXA). For this task, histrion noesis getting some of the vacuum of expanse in a bottleful to convey to Earth.

You crapper study SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow as she covers Discovery's test expanse travel from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Visit SPACE.com for rank news of Discovery's test assignment STS-133.

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