By
The Associated Press
SPACE CENTER, Houston - Two astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour ventured outside yesterday for their second spacewalk and successfully wired up a billion-dollar robot arm to its permanent new home at the international space station.
"Hello, sunshine," Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said as he and U.S. astronaut Scott Parazynski flew into sunrise nearly 240 miles over the Pacific Ocean just west of South America.
Parazynski connected power, data and video cables at the arm's new base. One of the two "hands" on the arm was plugged into this new socket Monday; it will remain affixed there for the next year.
It took the spacewalkers extra time and effort to get the backup power cable to work. Parazynski disconnected the cable and then reattached it. Then he and Hadfield opened another panel and checked connectors farther downstream on the cable; everything appeared to be fine.
Somehow that did the trick, and the backup power cable began working. "We're all celebrating down here," Mission Control radioed up.
Although only one power line is needed, NASA prefers two in case one fails.
The robot arm's hand secured itself to the new base after letting go Monday of the 3,000-pound packing crate to which it was attached as a temporary mount. This baby step measured 24 feet.
