Lights, Camera, Action

Dear Principal,

Please excuse Barbara Morgan from class. She definitely will be missing the start of school as her space shuttle mission has been extended to two weeks.

In celebration of an extra three days in orbit, Barbara took a bit of a breather from her job as “loadmaster” -- chief schlep for overseeing the transfer of 5,000 pounds of cargo to and from the space station -- to lend a hand to her spacewalking crewmates on Monday.

Barb took control of the shuttle’s robot arm so its TV cameras could beam good shots of Rick Mastracchio and Dave Williams replacing one of the station’s gyroscopes. There are four gyros aboard, which spin like tops to keep the outpost properly positioned in orbit without the need for gas-burning rocket thrusters.

It’s expensive to haul fuel -- or anything for that matter -- into space and the station needs to be properly oriented to gather solar energy for its electrical system. One of the 600-pound gyroscopes has been having problems, so NASA sent a new one up on shuttle Endeavour.

Barbara will be having another workout on the shuttle’s arm on Tuesday when she pulls out a platform used to store gear outside the station from Endeavour’s cargo bay and mounts it to the station’s backbone.

She’ll also have her first opportunity to talk to children from her space classroom aboard Endeavour. The event, which takes place at 2:09 p.m. Pacific time, will be with the Discovery Center of Boise, Idaho, which is Barbara’s home state.

During Monday’s spacewalk, NASA managers discussed what to do about the heat shield damage spotted on Endeavour’s belly just before the ship pulled into its parking slip at the International Space Station on Friday. There’s no threat to the crew or the shuttle, but managers are considering having spacewalkers patch the small hole to prevent additional damage during Endeavour’s high-speed flight through the atmosphere for landing.

As mission management team leader John Shannon put it, if spacewalkers can spend three or four hours in flight making a repair that could save 12 weeks of inspections, analysis and repairs on the ground, why not do it?

No decision yet, though.