Spacewalkers Tom Marshburn and Tim Cassidy spent a little less than five hours outside the space station this time. * The next task - Discovery is progressing therefore the launch
Astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy tonight completed the fifth and final spacewalk as part of mission STS-127 of the space shuttle Endeavor at the International Space Station. The mission lasted four hours and 54 minutes and ended at 19:27 Israel time.
Marshburn and Cassidy reinforced the multi-layer insulation around the Dexter facility, splitting electrical power channels into two gyroscopes that maintain the station's momentum; They installed video cameras on both sides of the exposed test facility at Japan's Kibu Space Laboratory, and performed a number of infrastructure tasks, including tying some cables and installing handrails and mobile foot restraints to assist future spacewalkers. Installation of a cargo attachment system on top of the S3 component has been postponed for a future spacewalk.
In total, this was the second shuttle mission to the space station in which five spacewalks took place. The previous one was STS-123 in March 2008.
Meanwhile, NASA announced that the carbon dioxide removal system, which together with a parallel Russian system removes carbon dioxide from the station, continues to function in manual mode. One of the heaters caused a short circuit on Saturday afternoon, and since then the backup system has been operated from the ground.
And in the meantime, the space shuttle Discovery was moved from the hangar where it was stored to the shuttle assembly facility for the installation of the external fuel tank and its inspection before the launch in August.
