Endeavour astronauts open ISS solar panels Eds: starts new cycle

A second panel attached during a three-hour spacewalk late Monday was unfurled, but the first panel fitted Sunday could not be deployed tautly, space officials said. Both arrays were still working at full capacity, a spokesman at the flight control centre at Korolyov outside Moscow told news agencies.

The folded, 73-metre-long panels were delivered to the station on Saturday by the shuttle. Each was opened metre by metre by computer, controllers at the U.S. space centre in Houston, Texas, said. Manual work to attach the 600-million-dollar panels to the outside of the ISS was performed by NASA astronauts Joseph Tanner and Carlos Noriega.

A further space walk was planned for late Tuesday when the astronauts will prepare a docking point on the Unity module for the arrival next year of the fourth section of the ISS, the U.S. science laboratory Destiny. In a third foray Wednesday they are due to visit the first long- term crew of the new 16-nation outpost.

The boarding party will carry a sack of Christmas presents to American Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yury Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalyov. On December 11. the shuttle will return to Earth with its crew of five. The ISS crew arrived at the start of November and will live in the station for four months before they are replaced.

(la/dpa)