SKIRMISHER

As anyone who spends days trolling NASA’s websites and any derivative thereof already knows, the International Space Station has been in some sort of a crisis. Great thing astronaut Scott Parazynski was there to brave the possibility of getting electrocuted by 100 volts of electricity and floating toward an inky abyss just to patch things up.

It took almost an hour for Parazynski to be maneuvered back from the wing, riding on the end of an approximately 90-foot robotic arm extension. That’s how long it took him to get out there, too.

Parazynski worked on the damage for more than two hours, cutting hinge and guide wires that became snarled and snagged the wing when it was being extended Tuesday. The astronauts had just relocated a massive beam at the space station, and finished extending its first solar power wing, when the second wing got hung up after extending only 90 feet.

Parazynski, 46, an emergency medical doctor before becoming an astronaut, looped five makeshift braces into the wing to reinforce a partially ripped hinge. They resembled big white stitches.

Throughout the repair, Parazynski used an L-shaped Teflon stick, wrapped with insulating tape, to keep the billowing solar wing away and to avoid being shocked. At times, as his shadow loomed large on the wing, gleaming orange and gold in the sunlight, he looked like a stick-wielding hockey player, all bundled up in his puffy space suit.

After that feat of bravado, we gather he’s in an ISS cubicle right now, teasing out the balls that got stuck in his throat during those balls-swallowing moments of being so far away from the safe confines of the cabin and staring at the wonderful, unfathomable void of space.

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Closeup images of solar panel damage here:

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