Astronaut Ron Garan (left), who is attached to the International Space Station's Canadarm2, holds the pump module as he is assisted by fellow spacewalker Mike Fossum as they secure the module in Atlantis' payload bay for its return to the earth. — Reuters

Houston, July 13
Two American astronauts wrapped up the last spacewalk of NASA’s space shuttle era at the International Space Station (ISS), where Atlantis is docked on the final mission of the 30-year US programme.

Ronald Garan and Michael Fossum, already aboard the ISS as part of the six-member international Expedition 28 crew when Atlantis arrived on Sunday, successfully completed their repair and maintenance tasks at the lab.

The main objective of retrieving a failed cooling ammonia pump from the orbiting outpost and placing it into the shuttle’s payload for return to the earth was tackled early in the six-hour 31-minute spacewalk. Soon after this, astronauts Fossum and Garan installed a materials science experiment on the station’s power truss, serviced a robot arm attachment fitting and installed a thermal cover over an unused docking port.

The astronauts then made their way back to the lab’s Quest airlock module, closed the hatch and began repressurising, officially ending a six-hour 31-minute spacewalk, the final excursion of the space shuttle era.

Today’s outing marked the 249th spacewalk by US astronauts in history, and brought the total time spent on spacewalk assembly and repair of the ISS to 1,009 hours and nine minutes, mission control in Houston said.

Yesterday, NASA decided to extend Atlantis mission by a day, so the astronauts will now spend 13 days on their final journey to space before the US shuttle programme closes down forever.

Atlantis’ key mission is to take advantage of the massive cargo space available one last time in order to restock the space station with a year’s worth of food and supplies.

The Atlantis crew began work yesterday with their six colleagues at the ISS to transfer nearly five tons of goods to the orbiting outpost and succeeded in unloading the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module.

Other supply ships from Europe, Japan and Russia will be able to stock the ISS when the shuttle programme retires after Atlantis, but the space available on the shuttle is unparallelled. — PTI