Astronauts start 3rd spacewalk

Two spacewalking astronauts tossed quilt-sized thermal shrouds from the international space station and watched them float away during their third spacewalk in nine days.

The two large thermal covers were folded up with smaller shrouds that had been covering an electronics box and were used to prevent parts of the space station from getting too hot or cold. Scientists believe they will burn up upon entering Earth's atmosphere.

"I don't think I could do it any better than that," astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria said to fellow American Sunita Williams and the first package floated away.

Lopez-Alegria joked that they had an easier time folding up the shrouds than their spacewalking colleagues who helped fold up a stubborn solar array during space shuttle Discovery's mission to the space station last December.

"Solar arrays wish they could retract this well!" he said.

In the past, engineers wanted to make sure that jettisoning items wouldn't strike the station, but they have grown more comfortable with the idea.

"We've gotten more proficient in jettison analysis and understanding the safety of jettisoning," lead spacewalk officer Glenda Laws said recently. "We expect the shrouds ... to look like a large bundle of laundry."

The spacewalk marked the first time three spacewalks have been conducted in such a short period of time without a space shuttle docked to it. The first two spacewalks had similar tasks, and flight controllers thought they could save preparation time by squeezing them together.

Lopez-Alegria planned to conduct a fourth spacewalk on Feb. 22 with Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin.

During Wednesday's spacewalk, chief astronaut Steve Lindsey chatted with the spacewalk ground team. A day earlier, he had escorted astronaut Lisa Nowak back to Houston from Florida, where she was charged with attempted murder and attempted kidnapping, accused of trying to harm a woman she viewed as a romantic rival for the attentions of astronaut William Oefelein. NASA has put her on leave for 30 days and removed her from mission activities.

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