Spacewalkers venture outside space station again

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb 4 (Reuters) Two astronauts left the International Space Station today to finish hooking up a new cooling system that will pave the way for installation of European and Japanese modules beginning this year.

Station commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Sunita Williams left the station's Quest airlock at 8:38 a.m. EST (1338 GMT) for the planned 6-1/2 hour spacewalk.

It was the second of three planned spacewalks over nine days, the most ambitious station assembly work ever attempted without a US space shuttle crew present.

Lopez-Alegria and Williams, both US astronauts, will spend most of their time disconnecting two old ammonia coolant lines and installing lines to a new centralized system. The work will complete a task started during on the first of the three spacewalks four days ago.

Once the new lines are installed, Lopez-Alegria and Williams will assist ground control teams with retracting and packing up a radiator panel that is no longer needed.

They also will finish hooking up cables to allow visiting space shuttles to tap into the station's electrical system and extend their stays in orbit.

NASA plans to use the new system during Endeavour's 14-day mission to the station in late June.

If time allows, the astronauts will photograph a solar array panel that needs to be folded up and moved elsewhere on the station.

NASA added a day to its last shuttle mission to the station in December because of problems retracting an identical panel.

The second wing of solar panels is scheduled to be folded up during the next mission, scheduled for March, and engineers are working on new procedures to avoid similar problems.

REUTERS MS PM2030