Station spacewalkers throw old hardware overboard
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: July 23, 2007
Perched on the end of the space station's robot arm directly below the international lab complex, astronaut Clay Anderson threw a refrigerator-size ammonia tank overboard today, pushing the 1,400-pound early ammonia servicer away behind the station to clear the way for future assembly work.


Credit: NASA TV

"We've got good downlink, we're solid here on the ground, everybody is go," astronaut Chris Cassidy radioed from mission control in Houston. "Jettison on your call."

"All right, let's give her a whirl, shall we?" Anderson replied. "All right, leaning back... here goes forward, jettison! It's (tumbling) about 180 degrees in 10 seconds and it's mostly a negative pitch with a slight right roll bias."

"Nice work," Cassidy said.

Dramatic video from the station showed the ammonia tank, clad in white insulation blankets, slowly tumbling away behind the station as the outpost sailed high above the Atlantic Ocean off the southeast coast of Brazil. Anderson's goal was to impart a departure velocity of about 1 mph. ...

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