However, this had pulled the array far enough back so the two arrays will not hit one another when P4 rotates for the first time. There are five metres of space between the two arrays at their closest points. Nonetheless, NASA wants to get the P6 array fully retracted before they move it to another part of the station on a future mission.
Pile up
There were actually two separate problems ground controllers encountered during the retraction.
First, the array behaved rather like a map that does not fold back together neatly. Some of its sections did not slide properly into the box. When this happened, they stopped the retraction, pushed the array back out a little, and then tried to retract again.
Wednesdays showstopper was caused by one segment in particular, known as bay 17.5. It would not slide into the box, causing a pile up when subsequent segments started to roll over on top of one another. NASA tried to retract the array beyond this point four times without success.
Reconfiguration
A fourth spacewalk could add one day to the already busy mission. Shuttle and station managers are considering sending astronauts to positions at the base of P6 and somewhere down its length to help guide the array into the box.
NASA teams were meeting overnight to discuss the safety of such an operation. Astronauts Bob Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang would be the crew members asked to make the spacewalk.
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2016-02-26
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