Two U.S. astronauts conducted the fourth and final
scheduled spacewalks for space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission on
Friday morning, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) announced.
The seven-hour, 24-minute spacewalk completed by
Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff at 7:39 a.m. EDT (1139 GMT) was the
final spacewalk conducted by space shuttle astronauts before NASA turns
over Endeavour and sister ships Discovery and Atlantis to museums.
Space station crew will continue to make spacewalks for maintenance and
repair tasks.
At 5:02 a.m. (0902 GMT), Fincke and Chamitoff
surpassed the 1, 000th hour astronauts and cosmonauts have spent
spacewalking in support of space station assembly and maintenance. The
milestone occurred four hours and 47 minutes into the spacewalk, the
159th in support of station assembly and maintenance, totaling 1,002
hours, 37 minutes.
The astronauts completed their mission to stow the
50-foot-long boom on the station truss and work on some new
installations to extend the space station's robotic arm. After that,
shuttle commander Mark Kelly called Mission Control in Houston to mark
the milestone -- after 12 years of efforts.
"Space station assembly is complete," Kelly said. Xinhua
