Sunita Williams sets new record

Houston, June. 16 (PTI): Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams today added yet another feather to her cap by setting a new world record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman.

"Early this morning, Mission Specialist Suni Williams set the record for the longest-duration single spaceflight by a woman," NASA said in a statement.

Williams, who began her spaceflight in December 10 last year, broke the 188-day, four-hour mark at 1113 IST set by her Shannon Lucid in 1996 on a mission to the Russian Mir space.

Earlier this year, she broke the record for most spacewalk time by a woman by logging 29 hours and 17 minutes in four space walks.

The record for most spacewalk by a woman was held by astronaut Kathryn Thornton.

In April, she also became the first astronaut to run a marathon in orbit.

Meanwhile, astronauts fixed a tear in the shuttle Atlantis's heat shield and two Russian scientists began to get crucial computers up and running, four days after the systems crashed at the international space station.

"Efforts to bring the Russian navigation computers back to full operations will continue today. Yesterday Russian flight controllers and the station crew were able to power-up two lanes of the Russian Central Computer and two lanes of the Terminal Computer by using a jumper cable to bypass a faulty secondary power switch," NASA said.

Flight controllers began sending commands overnight to restart some systems. The central computer is now communicating with the US command and control computer, and the terminal computer is communicating with US navigation computers, NASA said.

The progress came after days of frustrating effort.

"They're up and operational and this is good news for all," Lynette Madison, a NASA spokeswoman in Houston, said.

Cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov pulled off the feat by bypassing a power switch with a cable to get two out of three computer connections running. They planned to watch the computers for the next several hours to make sure they were functioning properly.

This type of massive computer failure had never been seen before on the space station, although individual computers do fail periodically.

Cameras, computer laptops and some lights on Atlantis were turned off Thursday to save energy in case it needs to stay an extra day at the station to help maintain the outpost's orientation while the problem with the Russian computers is addressed. The mission had already been extended from 11 to 13 days to repair the thermal blanket.

Meanwhile, two Atlantis astronauts had another mission to accomplish: repairing a torn thermal blanket that helps protect the shuttle from heat on its return flight to Earth.

Danny Olivas used a medical stapler to successfully secure in place the 4-by-6-inch corner, while James Reilly installed an external valve.

NASA insisted that the opening posed no threat to the crew. The Atlantis, on its first mission this year, blasted off last Friday to bring back Sunita and other crew.

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
What is the significance of the "longest spacewalks" and running a marathon in orbit? How important is the gender and ethnicity of the astronaut?

Why do various earthly economies value space exploration?

REMEMBER TO BE RESPECTFUL
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