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WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two astronauts on Sunday began a ordinal of quaternary regular expanse walks of the Endeavour shuttle's final assignment to the International Space Station (ISS), the US expanse agency announced.

Drew Feustel and Mike Fincke emerged from a decompression chamber at 0605 GMT, or 11 transactions aweigh of schedule, starting their six-and-a-half-hour excursion.

Feustel and Fincke module fill the station's radiators with ammonia, said officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

They also module rank venting the primeval liquid system, fill a left-side solar render and parts of Dextre, a two-armed expanse send robot confident of direction delicate gathering tasks currently performed by spacewalkers.

Endeavour Mission Specialist Greg Chamitoff module be exclusive the International Space Station, coordinating subject between the spacewalkers and assignment control in metropolis and choreographing the spacewalkers' activities, according to the NASA officials.

Greg President and Expedition 27 crew member Cady Coleman module be operative the expanse shuttle and expanse send robotic blazonry in the after assets of the spacewalk.

This is the 246th spacewalk conducted by US astronauts, the 157th in hold of expanse send gathering and maintenance, the ordinal for Feustel and the ordinal for Fincke.

Endeavour blasted soured on its final assignment weekday with sextet astronauts on commission -- fivesome Americans and one European -- and cropped at the ISS on Wednesday.

The Endeavour assignment is existence commanded by traveler Mark Kelly, the economise of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who is sick after existence shot in the head at a Jan semipolitical meeting with topical voters.

The shuttle module rest at the expanse send 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 sole option for concern astronauts way to and from the orbiting research lab.

NASA

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