Astronauts restore the International Space Station

Touching the Sun: The out of this world celebration as astronauts finally restore full power to the International Space Station
Friday, Sep 07 2012 

By LESLIE LARSON and MARK PRIGG

Spacewalk installed critical power unit that threatened to cripple the International Space Station's ability to carry out experiments

Astronauts had previously been forced to adapt a toothbrush to clean a stuck bolt holding the broken unit in place

It was the culmination of a series of risky spacewalks where little had gone according to plan.

But after being forced to improvise a toothbrush into a bolt cleaning device to remove a broken power supply unit in a previous spacewalk, Nasa astronaut Sunita Williams could not hide her delight as full power was finally restored to the International Space Station.

The Expedition 32 flight engineer, appeared to touch the bright sun during the mission’s third spacewalk on Sept. 5, 2012 in the amazing new images released today by the space agency.

Touching the sun: Sunita Williams waves to the camera and appears to touch the sun in a Spacewalk which saw two astronauts replace a faulty power unit that had threatened to cripple the station

During the six-hour, 28-minute spacewalk, Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Aki Hoshide (visible in the reflections of Williams’ helmet visor), flight engineer, completed the installation of a Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) that was hampered by a possible misalignment and damaged threads where a bolt must be placed.- More...