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WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two astronauts on weekday embarked on the first expanse achievement of the Endeavour shuttle's test assignment to the International Space Station (ISS), according to NASA.

Andrew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff, act spacesuits with solidified and broken red stripes, respectively, floated conceive of the beam at 0710 time to regain digit science experiments that had been delivered in November 2009.

Feustel, who is on his fourth period expanse walk, module then regain a similar investigate brought up aboard Endeavour and install it.

The "excursion" was to last sextet and a half hours, according to NASA, and module be followed by three more expanse walks over the instruction of the 16-day mission, the last travelling of the decades-old US shuttle program.

On Thursday Endeavour's astronauts installed a massive physics experiment, conception of a 16-nation collaboration that aims to conceive how the aggregation began.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 is a $2-billion, 15,000-pound (7,000-kilogram) particle detector that module remain at the ISS to scour the aggregation for hints of Stygian matter and antimatter over the incoming decade.

It is due to beam data to scientists on Earth for the incoming 10 years.

NASA managers at assignment control in Houston were meantime inspecting the shuttle's modify shield after seven tiles appeared to hit been dilapidated during its ascent, but officials hit said there is no think to be alarmed.

Endeavour blasted off on its test assignment on weekday with sextet astronauts on commission -- fivesome Americans and digit European -- and docked at the ISS on Wednesday.

The Endeavour assignment is being commanded by traveler Mark Kelly, the husband of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who is sick after being shot in the head at a Jan political gathering with topical voters.

The shuttle module remain at the expanse beam until May 30, backward to the United States on June 1.

The 30-year US expanse shuttle information formally ends after this assemblage with the flight of Atlantis, leaving Russia's expanse capsules as the mend choice for world astronauts way to and from the orbiting investigate lab.

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