Astronauts spacewalk with song on their lips

The two International Space Station (ISS) astronauts left their orbiting home in the hands of ground controllers on Wednesday and floated outside to instal an experimental robotic arm and inspect vents that might be causing air-supply equipment breakdowns.

The two International Space Station (ISS) astronauts left their orbiting home in the hands of ground controllers on Wednesday and floated outside to instal an experimental robotic arm and inspect vents that might be causing air-supply equipment breakdowns.

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The spacewalk — unable to be completely televised because of a cold station antenna — was the first in Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov’s three-and-a-half months mission.

“Hello, space, my old friend,” Chiao, a veteran spacewalker, said as he exited.

A little earlier, flight controllers teased Sharipov for singing as he got ready to make his first-ever spacewalk. “You could hear that, huh?” he asked with a laugh. The singing and humming continued outside.

Because of the grounding of NASA’s shuttle fleet, the ISS has been limited to two residents, one less than usual. As a result, no one was left inside during the spacewalk to monitor station systems — flight controllers kept tabs on things, an increasingly common practice in the wake of the Columbia disaster almost exactly two years ago.

Controllers did not get to see the start of the spacewalk 362 km up because of an unusually cold dish antenna. They settled for audio only and said that they would view the videotaped event later, after the sun had warmed the antenna.