It was a tough time in space last week. On the day before Halloween, crew members on the International Space Station (ISS) watched as a huge, 240-foot solar panel carefully opened, like a slow-motion accordion. But then something went wrong. The panel seemed to snag. Suddenly, there was a two-and-a-half-foot rip in the thin, metal mesh of one of the panels that turns sunlight into power for the station. The crew locked the damaged panel in place, not quite fully opened, in order to prevent further damage.
Luckily, the cable that carries power back to the station was undamaged. "That's great news," says NASA's space station manager, Michael Suffredini. "It doesn't have to look good. It just has to give us power."
The space shuttle Discovery arrived at the ISS on October 25. The shuttle carried a new section, or module, to the ISS's science labs.
The solar panel's problems extended Discovery's mission by at least a day. The extra time will give spacewalking astronauts a chance to help fix the panel.
The repair will be tricky, because the panel is thin. It is only about as thick as a shower curtain.
Discovery's commander, Pamela Melroy, felt that her crew was up to performing the job. "We're kind of in the groove right now," she said last Wednesday.