Atlantis Astronauts Begin Spacewalking on Mission

"Keep your eyes on your gloves," Mission Control told astronauts James Reilly and Danny Olivas on Monday as they prepared to engage in a spacewalk outside the celestial confines of the International Space Station (ISS), reports the Associated Press in the The Dallas Morning News.

This is the first spacewalk to be performed on the Atlantis mission. During the spacewalk, ground control engineers down in Houston, Texas, will analyze what they are told and shown as the pair of astronauts glide to a peeled-back thermal blanket on the Atlantis spacecraft to determine if it needs to be repaired before they bring the ship home. The peel-back was discovered during an inspection on Saturday.

"If we do have damage to the glove, it will help us detect where on the vehicle we have a sharp edge," Kirk Shireman, deputy program manager of the ISS, told Sci-Tech Today, in explanation for why the astronauts will want to keep a close watch on their gloved hands.

The main mission of the spacewalk, however, is to install a pair of massive girders and two new solar wings to boost the International Space Station's power grid. The astronauts will accomplish this installation of the heaviest-yet components to be added to the ISS with help from robotic arms. The components are called the Starboard 3/Starboard 4 (S3/S4) trusses.

"We'll have much more redundancy in the power system. And we'll be in a better configuration for later on in building the space station," Shireman said.

Delivering and installing these trusses is the reason the Atlantis docked at the ISS. The possible needed repair work is only incidental to the mission.

"[W]e'll be balancing out the station with the solar arrays on that side. And that's our primary, and relatively simple, objective, when you look at it from that standpoint," Reilly was quoted as saying by Space.Com.

The spacewalk is to commence at 2:53 PM Eastern Standard Time.