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Clearwater astronaut ventures outside space station today

NASA

Nicole Stott, 46, will spend three months at the International Space Station.

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TBO.com

Published: September 1, 2009

A graduate of Clearwater High School who rocketed into space last week will step outside for a walk today.

Flight engineer Nicole Stott, who also attended St. Petersburg College and the University of Central Florida, is scheduled to begin a spacewalk with mission specialist Danny Olivas at 5:49 p.m. today.

Together, they will remove an old ammonia tank on the International Space Station. A new, fully loaded tank will be installed on a second spacewalk Thursday

The two astronauts, along with five others, blasted off inside space shuttle Discovery Friday night. They hooked up Sunday with the space station, where Stott will spend the next three months.

This afternoon, some of the 13 astronauts at the linked shuttle and station will begin unloading tons of equipment and experiments that were delivered by Discovery. The gear is inside a huge closetlike chamber that was attached to the space station Monday. One of the first items to come out will be a treadmill named after Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert.

Stott was born in Albany, N.Y., but grew up in Clearwater, where she developed a love for flying alongside her father, who built and flew homemade aircraft.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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