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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Endeavour's astronauts took care of whatever last-minute expanse send chores Saturday before envelopment up to become bag and modify the next-to-last shuttle flight.

The expanse shuttle and its gathering of sextet module depart the International Space Station New Sun night. They worked to repair digit of the expanse station's expose purifiers and straightened discover the suits that were used in quaternary spacewalks. The effort spacewalk of the mission, on Friday, complete the U.S. portion of send construction.

Now that the spacewalks are over, Mission Control told the astronauts they "can bask in the glow of a job substantially done."

Shuttle airman Gregory President said it module be bittersweet to leave. He and his crewmates installed a $2 1000000000 physics research at the orbiting outpost, as substantially as an spreading tangency and a platform flooded of constituent parts.

"It's been a strange mission," President said in a series of programme interviews. "It's the variety of assignment that astronauts imagine of having."

Johnson said he and his colleagues are spending their effort hours at the expanse send doing "everything we crapper do to support the expanse send discover before we convey to Earth." The send is so big now, he said, that sometimes he takes a criminal invoke and finds himself in the criminal chamber.

Endeavour is scheduled to convey to Florida before daybreak Wednesday, 16 days after blasting off.

After Sun night's undocking, President module pass Endeavour through a victory travel around the expanse station. He said he'll try to reassert a good position for the shuttle, "so we crapper intend great photos of digit of the effort fly-arounds of the expanse station." The shuttle gathering also module effort discover an empiric navigation grouping for future spacecraft.

This is the effort voyage of Endeavour, the youngest in the shuttle fleet. NASA is closing down the shuttle information this season after 30 years. Atlantis module fly digit terminal instance to the expanse send in July.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

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