Word: skylab
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Having sufficient battery power was vital to the mission. Every time Skylab was in the earth's shadow-for some 30 minutes during each 90-minute orbit -the production of electricity by the four working windmill-shaped solar panels atop the telescope mount ceased, leaving the lab completely reliant on its batteries. Freeing the jammed solar wing thus assumed even greater importance: it could provide Skylab with another 3,000 watts of electricity while it was in sunlight and charge up eight idle batteries connected to the wing...
Soon after the astronauts had rendezvoused with Skylab last month, Astronaut Paul Weitz-leaning out of the Apollo command module-had attempted to pull the jammed wing out with a long-handled tool that resembled a boat hook. But a 2-ft.-long scrap of aluminum from the ripped shield was so tightly wrapped around the bottom of the wing that it would not extend...
NASA's engineers and technicians, who had already displayed extraordinary Yankee ingenuity in fashioning Skylab's makeshift sunshade, refused to give up. Experimenting with duplicates of tools aboard Skylab, they devised techniques for cutting, sawing and even prying off the metal. Practicing with these tools in simulated conditions of weightlessness in NASA'S big water test tank at Huntsville, Ala., Backup Astronauts Rusty Schweickart and Ed Gibson demonstrated that the implements might well work in space...
Thus Mission Control gave the astronauts permission for the space walk. After donning their pressure suits, all three astronauts moved from the orbital-workshop area of Skylab into the multiple docking adapter. Then, while Weitz remained behind, Conrad...
...Skylab was just about to enter the earth's shadow, and the astronauts had to begin their work illuminated only by lights in the hatch area. After they assembled five sections of tubing into a 25-ft.-long extension pole and attached it to a 2-ft.-long cutting tool similar to pruning shears, they untangled the long, snaking umbilical cords that provided them with oxygen and a communications link to Skylab and Mission Control. Then, as the sun reappeared, they began to make their way through the maze of trusses on Skylab's telescope mount, circled part...