The fourth and final spacewalk of Endeavour's 15-day mission at the international space station wrapped early due to a spacesuit atmosphere issue following a long and busy day working outside America's outpost in space.Mission control at the Johnson Space Center told astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Steve Bowen that today's spacewalk would wrap early due to high levels of carbon monoxide in Kimbrough's spacesuit. The six hour, seven minute space walk offically ended at 7:31 pm EST tonight. Today's spacewalk was the 118th in support of space station construction.
All task were accomplished during the walk, including the bearing cleaning and regreasing of the solar array rotary joint bearings which help the right side arrays move like a water wheel. The duo also install two GPS or global positioning system receivers on Japan's Kibo module for use next year. Beginning in Autumn 2009, Japan will launch vessels of supplies to dock with their module via help from GPS.
A video camera was also installed on the port one truss to assist in station movement of objects outside.
Also, as we have reported since the beginning, Endeavour will stay in space one extra day in support of docked operations with the station. Undocking is now planned for Friday; with landing now planned for Sunday afternoon at 1:18 pm EST.
The ten person crew which make up the Endeavour and space station crews will spend Thanksgiving Day together now which makes alot of us thankful for what they have accomplished and that we all have a promising future of human expansion in space.
At an Endeavour MET+ 10 days, 5 minutes, this is spacelaunchnews.com.
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