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STORY WRITTEN FOR & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: November 3, 2007Physician-astronaut Scott Parazynski, working on the end of a boom carried by the space station's robot arm, successfully repaired a mangled solar array today, cutting away a snarled guidewire, installing five suture-like braces and then standing by while his crewmates extended the array its full 110-foot length.Working with deliberate care, astronaut Dan Tani, sending commands from a computer inside the shuttle-station complex, extended the array's central mast a half bay at a time, stopping and letting Parazynski assess the health of the repairs as tension slowly built up on the just-installed braces.There were no problems and as the last bay of the array's mast extended and locked into place, putting some 70 pounds of tension on the blanet's slats, sensors indicated full extension and Tani exclaimed, "Oh, we've got deploy discretes, two deploy discretes!""Yay, all right!" someone yelled."Beautiful.""Great news," Parazynski said. "What an accomplishment.""Nice teamwork," congratulated station commander Peggy Whitson."Phenomenal," Parazynski agreed."Excellent work, guys, excellent," Whitson said."But it's not over yet," Discovery commander Pam Melroy said. "We've still got to get you inside.""That would be nice," Parazynski said."Those are the minor details, but thank you guys very much," astronaut Steve Swanson radioed from Houston.A successful repair was critical to NASA's plans for continuing space station assembly. At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, engineers moved the shuttle Atlantis from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building for attachment to a set of boosters and an external tank. Launch on the next space station assembly mission, a high-profile flight to deliver Europe's Columbus research module, is targeted for Dec. 6.Because of problems with the station's right-side solar array rotary joint, NASA needed to get the P6 array repaired and fully extended to provide the power necessary to support the attachment of Columbus next month as well as Japanese research modules scheduled for launch early next year.With today's successful repair job, the December flight should remain on track.The 17-ton P6 solar array truss segment was launched in 2000 to provide power during the initial stages of assembly. The lab's main power truss is now built and equipped with huge sets of solar panels on each end: starboard 4 (S4) on the right side and port 4 (P4) on the left. The outermost right side S6 arrays, scheduled for launch next fall, will be attached to a short spacer segment known as S5.During two recent shuttle flights, astronauts retracted the two wings of the P6 array and disconnected it from the station's power system. Spacewalkers had problems retracting the 4B panel, however, encountering a frayed guidewire that repeatedly hung up on grommets during the retraction process.On Tuesday, P6 was unbolted from its initial mounting point and moved to the far left end of the power truss and bolted to the P5 spacer segment. The first of its two solar array wings, known as P6-2B, extended a full 110 feet as required, but the crew aborted deployment of the 4B wing when one section of hinged blanket slats hung up due to a guide wire snag. Two seams between adjacent slats pulled open, resulting in separate tears, and the edges of several nearby slats were crumpled. The largest rip measured some two-and-a-half feet long.Eighty percent deployed, the P6-4B array was able to generate more than 95 percent percent of the electricity of a fully extended wing. But without being fully extended, the array did not have the structural stability required for sun tracking. As a result, the station's left-side solar alpha rotary joint, or SARJ, was locked in place until the damage could be fixed.With today's repair, the left side arrays can once again be turned to track the sun.Additional coverage for subscribers:VIDEO:THE FLIGHT DAY 11 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE VIDEO:FRIDAY'S STATUS BRIEFING AND SPACEWALK PREVIEW VIDEO:THE FLIGHT DAY 10 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE VIDEO:THURSDAY'S STATUS BRIEFING AND SPACEWALK PREVIEW VIDEO:THE FLIGHT DAY 9 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE VIDEO:WEDNESDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING VIDEO:CREW NEWS BRIEFING WITH U.S., ITALY, RUSSIA VIDEO:THE FLIGHT DAY 8 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE VIDEO:TUESDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING VIDEO:SOLAR ARRAY WING TEARS DURING DEPLOYMENT VIDEO:FIRST SOLAR ARRAY IS SUCCESSFULLY UNFURLED VIDEO:HOUSTON BEGINS SOLAR ARRAYS DEPLOY SEQUENCE VIDEO:SPARE POWER SWITCHING UNIT INSTALLED VIDEO:INSPECTIONS OF PORT-SIDE ROTARY JOINT VIDEO:RADIATOR UNFOLDED FROM THE P6 TRUSS VIDEO:THE ASTRONAUTS PAUSE FOR QUICK PHOTOS VIDEO:SPACEWALKERS REMOVE SHROUDS 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