Cape    Canaveral, Fla.  Astronauts stepped out on a spacewalk    Saturday to perform some tricky cable work needed before new    American-made crew capsules can dock at the International Space    Station.  
    It was the first of three spacewalks planned for NASA astronauts Butch    Wilmore and Terry Virts over the coming week.  
    Altogether, Wilmore and Virts have 764 feet of cable to run    outside the space station. The longest single stretch, for    installation Saturday, is 43 feet.  
    NASA considers this the most complicated    cable-routing job in the 16-year history of the space station.    Equally difficult will be running cable on the inside of the    complex.  
    The extensive rewiring is needed to prepare for NASA's next    phase 260 miles up: the 2017 arrival of the first commercial    spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the orbiting    lab. NASA is paying Boeing and SpaceX to    build the capsules and fly them from Cape Canaveral, which    hasn't seen a manned launch since the shuttles retired in 2011.    Instead, Russia is doing all the taxi work  for a steep price.  
    The first of two docking ports for the Boeing and SpaceX    vessels  still under development  is due to arrive in June.    Even more spacewalks will be needed to rig everything up.  
    Virts, who arrived at the space station in December, savored    the moment as he floated out on his first spacewalk high above    the South Pacific. "Pretty cool," Virts said. The men hauled    out with them a big white bundle containing cables. Saturday's    space walk began at 7:45 a.m. EST and was expected to last 6.5    hours. NASA is broadcastingthe spacewalk live online.  
    The second spacewalk will be Wednesday and the third on March    1.  
    Spacesuit concerns stalled the work by a day.  
    NASA wanted to make certain that the suits worn by Wilmore and    Virts had reliable fan and pump assemblies. Two other fan-pump    units failed aboard the space station in recent months and were    returned to Earth earlier this month for analysis. Corrosion    was discovered, the result of water intrusion from testing.  
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Astronauts as cable guys: Biggest wiring job in space station history (+video)