In the morning: the last spacewalk of space shuttle crew members

This is the fourth spacewalk of the Endeavor mission. In the next mission - STS-135, one spacewalk is planned, but it will be performed by the station's occupants

end of an era In the morning (07:46 Israel time), astronauts Mike Fink and Greg Chaimtoff will leave for the fourth and final spacewalk as part of the Endeavor STS-134 mission. The planned duration of the mission is six and a half hours. The main task will be to transfer the sensor system worn on the end of the shuttle's robotic arm to the station.
If all goes well, the total number of spacewalk hours for station maintenance will pass the XNUMX-hour milestone.
This will be the last space shuttle crew walk. Although a spacewalk is planned as part of the last space shuttle mission to the space station, STS-135, it will be performed by the station's permanent occupants and not by guests from the shuttle.
At the same time, Endeavor crew members completed the Endeavor shuttle's heat shield test. This task is usually carried out after leaving the space station, but due to the fear of damage to the heat shield, three-dimensional photographs of the bottom of the shuttle - including the wings and the nose - were taken to examine whether there are any remnants of micro-meteorites that could disrupt the entry into the atmosphere.
There is still time for the engineers on the ground to evaluate the data based on the photographs, before they give permission for the shuttle to leave the station, which serves as a safe haven in the event of a malfunction that prevents the astronauts from returning to Earth in the shuttle.
On Wednesday's third spacewalk, Drew Feustel and Mike Fink installed electrical cables and grab handles on the outside of the Russian Zarya module, to enable the station's robotic arm - CANADA ARM 2 - to be operated from there. The two also installed a video signal converter on Zarya and ran electrical cables from the American component to Zarya . They provided backup for the transmission of electricity from the solar collectors to the Russian component.