Astronauts do a second spacewalk

In a routine but difficult spacewalk two astronauts on Monday overcame stubborn bolts, ill-fitting parts and spacesuit problems to perform a critical repair to the International Space Station.

Astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum replaced a cable reel to a rail car needed to move large pieces around the giant orbital outpost in a spacewalk dotted with glitches. The reel, severed accidentally last year by a cable cutter, provides video, data and power to the rail car. Fixing the cable reel was vital to space station construction, which will take 15 more shuttle flights.

The station is half-finished. No work had been done since the Columbia accident in 2003, which killed all seven astronauts.
Discovery's mission is the second of two test flights to see how the extensively redesigned shuttle performs.

Assuming the second half of Discovery's mission goes as smoothly as the first, NASA will launch Atlantis in late August, followed by another mission in December. Astronauts have a huge amount of work coming ahead.