Space station spacewalk postponed until mid-February

What was to be the second of January's two spacewalks was scrubbed Monday and postponed until mid-February.

Last week, astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle conducted the first of two planned spacewalks. During their six hours outside the International Space Station, the duo replaced a Latching End Effector on the station's robotic Canadarm2.

The effector, the LEE-B, works like the robotic arm's hand. After being replaced with a spare, scientists tested the new hand and discovered a communications anomaly.

Af first, officials decided to alter the purpose of Monday's spacewalk, which was planned for Vande Hei and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai. The astronauts were to undo some of the work performed last week in an effort to correct the anomaly.

But over the weekend, robotics engineers with the Canadian Space Agency were able to develop a software patch to fix the communications problem.

"A confidence test verifying the software upgrade was successfully completed Saturday night," NASA reported.

An exact date for the postponed spacewalk hasn't been confirmed yet. During the spacewalk, Vande Hei and Kanai will reposition the old, spare effectors.

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