CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronauts worked both inside
and outside the International Space Station (news - web sites)
on Tuesday, preparing it for the new Expedition Two crew, which
is beginning a four-month stay.

Spacewalkers Andrew Thomas and Paul Richards from the space shuttle
Discovery (news - web sites) added final touches to a platform
that will support a new Canadian-built robot arm when it arrives
next month.

They worked in the vacuum of space for almost 6.5 hours. Among
other tasks, they prodded a balky locking pin into position on
one of the station's solar array wings and joined some power connections
between the solar-power generating station and the Destiny laboratory
module, which was added to the station last month.

``We're looking good here,'' Thomas said as he and Richards floated
outside the 17-story space station.

Inside the station, the handover between the station's inaugural
crew and their replacements continued. American William Shepherd
and Russians Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalyov are to return
to Earth with the shuttle crew when they depart the station on
Saturday.

They will leave behind the Expedition Two crew of Yury Usachev,
Susan Helms and James Voss.

Including shuttle commander James Wetherbee and pilot James Kelly,
there are a total of 10 astronauts at work, making this the busiest
the space station has ever been. Before, eight was the largest
number posted there.

Richards, a space rookie, took time to admire the view from 237
miles up on this, his first spacewalk, or EVA in space-agency
jargon, for extra-vehicular activity.

``Everything everybody ever said about being out on EVA and looking
down is true,'' Richards said.

While Tuesday's spacewalk, the second of this mission, was underway,
Shepherd, Usachev and Voss were busy unloading the Leonardo cargo
module.

The $150 million, Italian-built module, carrying supplies and
equipment for the new crew, rode to space in Discovery's payload
bay and is now mated to the station's Unity module.




The cargo module, making its first trip into space, will be returned
to the shuttle for the ride back to Earth. It was built to make
about 25 such round trips, NASA (news - web sites) said.

The hardware brought up on this mission includes command stations
for the robot arm.

There's also a kind of mini emergency room for sick or injured
astronauts, with everything from aspirin for minor aches and pains,
to a defibrillator to restart stopped hearts.

Leonardo also carries the most sophisticated science equipment
to arrive thus far, the Human Research Facility for studying the
long-term effects of near weightlessness on astronauts bodies.

The station has been staffed since the Expedition One crew arrived
on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Nov. 2. The United States, Russia,
and their partners in Europe, Japan, and Canada see the space
station has the first foothold in their goal to occupy outer space
permanently.

NASA, the U.S. space agency, plans to spend $95 billion building
and operating the station for a decade or more.