Space station now has full power capability

Unrolling of Space Station solar wings.

Friday, March 20th  saw the commissioning of the International Space Station’s fourth pair of solar arrays. This completes the the solar power array installation.

The solar wings were delivered to the ISS by the Discovery shuttle and installed by its astronauts with the help of the Canadian designed Canadarm2 robotic arm.

The station’s arrays can now produce up to 120 kilowatts of electricity, nearly doubling the power available for scientific experiments - from 15kW to 30kW.

“It’s just really amazing,” commented Mike Fincke, the space station’s commander. He said there was “a shout of triumph” from astronauts aboard the linked station-shuttle complex once the two wings were fully extended.

The installation work took spacewalking astronautsRichard Arnold and Steve Swanson just over six hours to complete.

The entire ISS backbone is now 102 meters long, and the space station is nearly 80% complete.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7956332.stm

Spacewalking astronaut Richard Arnold helps connect the new solar arrays