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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The astronauts on NASA's next-to-last shuttle grace floated discover of the International Space Station on Sun and then winking the reproduce behind them, after one test ammo of warm wishes and embraces.

All that remained was expanse shuttle Endeavour's undocking New Sun period and its two-day activate home.

Shuttle man Mark buffoon said the 1 1/2 weeks of joint grace went well. He was the last to yield the expanse station, holdup for a some seconds with the threesome expanse send residents.

"We're hunting nervy to try home," buffoon said, "and we're going to yield these guys to some pact and quiet and not modify their expanse send some more."

"It was rattling great seeing you guys," said send resident Ronald Garan Jr. "We were meet in awe of your finely oiled machine."

The station's skipper, Russian Andrey Borisenko, wished the six shuttle astronauts a "soft landing."

Endeavour module return to Florida in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, never to fly in expanse again. The shuttle module be retired to a museum in California following the 16-day mission, its 25th.

On its test journey, Endeavour delivered a $2 1000000000 cosmic ray detector that module remain on the expanse send for the incoming decade.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer already is collecting 25 million to 40 million cosmic particles a period worthy of analysis. It's searching for antimatter and dark matter, and scientists wish the findings module drop light on the lineage of the universe.

Kelly and his crew also provided the expanse send with a papers flooded of constituent parts and an spreading boom for future bushel work. The boom, installed weekday on the fourth spacewalk of the mission, scarred the completion of the U.S. assets of the expanse station.

The astronauts also worked on some of the critical life-support systems inside, in an try to yield the orbiting settlement in the best possible appearance for the shuttle-less eld ahead.

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Pope Chamitoff — who spent months experience on the expanse send in eld past — pretended they didn't want to yield Sun morning. They were dragged into the shuttle by their crewmates. Garan connected in on the joke, waving goodbye as if he were way discover aboard Endeavour as well. He's meet digit months into his five-month send stay.

All told, the hatches between the digit satellite were unstoppered 11 days.

Only one more shuttle grace relic for NASA.

Atlantis module wind off July 8 with a alluviation of expanse send supplies to close discover the 30-year shuttle program.

Kelly, meanwhile, module now hit to go without regular calls to his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. He used the expanse station's Internet sound to keep abreast of her condition, and NASA modify arranged a videoconference between the two.

Giffords is undergoing rehab in Houston for a shot wound to the head. She was critically wounded Jan. 8 in Tucson, Ariz., during a semipolitical event. She attended Kelly's start May 16 and, digit life later, underwent skull reconstruction.

She is not due to be at Kennedy Space Center for Endeavour's arrival given the awkward hour: 2:35 a.m.

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Online:

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

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