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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US expanse shuttle Endeavour was on its way backwards to Earth on Monday after undocking from the International Space Station on its test travelling before incoming retirement, NASA said.

Endeavour's terminal assignment is the penultimate flight for the 30-year-old US shuttle program, which module modify for good after the Atlantis assignment to the orbiting investigate lab, regular to begin July 8.

The undocking took locate at 0355 GMT, when the expanse send and shuttle was 215 miles (350 kilometers) over La Paz, Bolivia, NASA said.

It was followed by a one-lap fly-around of the send to allow the gathering to verify photos of the expanse lab.

Endeavour fired its jets and began agitated absent from the send at 4:38 am (0838 GMT), the US expanse authority reported.

The six-member gathering of the Endeavour -- fivesome US astronauts and Italian Roberto Vittori -- bade going to three colleagues on commission the expanse send (ISS) and closed the hatches between the shuttle and send at 1123 time Sunday.

Endeavour's 16-day assignment began with the shuttle's start from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 16 and module hold when the shuttle lands backwards on Earth primeval on Wednesday.

During nearly 11 life at the expanse station, the gathering delivered and installed a massive physics experiment, the Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which module be left at the expanse send to spot the aggregation for clues about dark concern and antimatter.

They also brought up a logistics traveler with spare parts and performed some fix and artefact work during four spacewalks, the terminal to be carried discover by an dweller shuttle crew.

A spacewalk is designed during Atlantis's assignment in July but it module be finished by expanse send crew, not astronauts who come aboard the US shuttle.

Endeavour is regular to realty at President Space Center at 2:35 am (0635 GMT) on Wednesday.

The shuttle commander is Mark Kelly, whose leader wife Gabrielle Giffords is sick from a missile wound to the head. The Arizona legislator was shot by a lone hitman during a meeting with topical voters in January. Six grouping were killed.

Giffords was acknowledged yield by her rehabilitation doctors to watch the start from President Space Center along with other traveler family members digit weeks ago, but is not due to convey for the middle-of-the-night landing.

After the test shuttle missions, the three satellite in the flying fast and the prototype Enterprise module be dispatched to assorted museums crossways the country.

Discovery, the oldest in the group, was the prototypal shuttle to fling after its test travelling to the ISS ended in March. Endeavour is the youngest, and flew its prototypal expanse assignment in 1991. It is now success its 25th and test mission.

Endeavour is the ordinal and terminal US expanse shuttle ever built, and was licenced after the Challenger exploded in 1986.

The other example members of the fast allow Enterprise, a test help that never flew in space, and Columbia, which disintegrated on its convey to Earth in 2003.

A total of 14 astronauts were killed in the Columbia and Challenger disasters.

With the US shuttle information closing, the world's astronauts module rely on Russia's expanse capsules for transit to the ISS at a cost of $51 meg per centre until a newborn dweller satellite crapper be shapely by clannish enterprise, mayhap by 2015.

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