Spacewalkers Upgrade Station

A German astronaut walked in space with a Yank colleague yesterday to fit the International Space Station with a new tank of nitrogen. Hans Schlegal and US astronaut Max Walheim completed the upgrade in a seven-hour mission, reports Space.com. "Hello to all the people of Germany," Walheim said as the men passed over the country. "What a pleasure it is to be up here spacewalking with one of your native sons."

It was Schlegel's first-ever spacewalk and he seemed fully recovered from the unspecified illness that kept him from a spacewalk earlier this week. Other shuttle and space station astronauts yesterday worked on hooking up the new Columbus lab. Walheim and another astronaut will be back tomorrow to install some experiments in the last spacewalk of the mission that has now been extended to 13 days. (More International Space Station stories.)