Astronauts begin second space walk from Atlantis

US astronauts on Wednesday began the second of three planned spacewalks from the shuttle Atlantis on its rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Mission Specialists Stephen Bowen and Michael Good departed the shuttle at 6:38 am (1038 GMT), for a spacewalk expected to last about six-and-a-half hours.

Bowen's first task was to adjust a wayward cable on the end of the orbiter boom, after astronauts discovered that it was inhibiting a camera from maneuvering correctly.

The two spacewalkers also are to replace three 375-pound (170-kilogram) batteries on the station port solar array.

During a first spacewalk on Monday, astronauts installed a space-to-ground communications antenna and a spare parts platform on Dexter, the two-armed robotic device on the orbiting ISS.

The shuttle and its crew of six docked with the orbiting space lab on Sunday about 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the South Pacific.

Atlantis and her crew will unload more than 12 tons of equipment, including the communications antenna, power storage batteries, and a radiator.

The biggest single element is the five-ton Rassver research module, or MRM-1, which will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.

The 13-day mission is the last one scheduled voyage for Atlantis, which first launched in 1985 and has logged some 115 million miles in its career.

Only two more shuttle launches remain -- one in September for Discovery and the final blast off for Endeavour in November -- before the curtain falls on this era of human spaceflight.