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The STS-120 and Expedition 16 crews will continue to work today on the tools and procedures for Saturday’s spacewalk to repair a torn solar array. Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock will conduct the excursion, which is slated to kick off at 6:28 a.m. EDT Saturday.

Parazynski will make the repair while suspended from a boom attached to the space station’s robotic arm, and Wheelock will assist from the station’s truss. Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson and Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Dan Tani will be operating the station’s robotic arm from the robotic work station inside the Destiny laboratory. Mission Specialist Paolo Nespoli will be the spacewalk coordinator.

Image Above: STS-120 Pilot George Zamka holds a "cufflink" apparatus in the Harmony node of the International Space Station, which will be attached to the damaged solar arrays and take the structural load off of the broken hinge during Saturday's spacewalk. Image credit: NASA

The STS-120 and Expedition 16 crews have completed the configuration of the suits and tools that will be used during Saturday’s spacewalk. In addition, they have completed the robotic arm tasks that were part of the spacewalk preparations. The space station robotic arm grappled and handed off the shuttle’s arm extension, the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, or OBSS, to the shuttle robotic arm for overnight parking. The OBSS will provide support for Mission Specialist Scott Parazynski on the spacewalk, the fourth of the mission.