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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US expanse shuttle Endeavour on Sunday embattled to undock from the International Space Station and jet backwards to Earth, patch up its final travelling before incoming retirement, NASA said.

Endeavour's terminal assignment is the terminal grace for the 30-year US shuttle program, which module end for beatific after the Atlantis assignment to the orbiting research work in July.

The six-member gathering of the Endeavour bid going to threesome astronaut colleagues on commission the expanse send (ISS) and winking the hatches between the shuttle and send at 7:23 am (1123 GMT), NASA said.

The astronauts were to pay the salutation unerect in activity for the late period undocking set for 11:55 pm (0355 GMT), NASA said.

Endeavour's 16-day assignment began with the shuttle's start from Cape Canaveral, Florida on May 16 and module conclude when the shuttle lands backwards on Earth early on June 1.

The aggroup spent a amount of 10 days, 23 hours, and 45 transactions at the expanse station.

During that time, the gathering delivered and installed a large physics experiment, the Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer-2, that module be left at the expanse send to spot the universe for clues most Stygian concern and antimatter.

They also brought up a logistics traveler with constituent parts for the orbiting work and performed whatever maintenance and artefact work during four spacewalks, the terminal to be finished 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 arrive aboard the US shuttle.

Endeavour is scheduled to realty at President Space Center at 2:35 am (0635 GMT) on Wednesday, carrying its gathering of fivesome US astronauts and European Roberto Vittori.

The shuttle man is Mark Kelly, whose leader wife Gabrielle Giffords is sick from a missile wound to the head. The Arizona congresswoman was shot by a unaccompanied gunman during a gathering with local voters in January. Six grouping were killed.

Giffords was granted leave by her rehabilitation doctors to check the start from President Space Center along with another astronaut kinsfolk members two weeks ago, but is not expected to return for the middle-of-the-night landing.

After the final shuttle missions, the threesome satellite in the air fast and the image Enterprise module be sent to assorted museums across the country.

Discovery, the oldest in the group, was the prototypal shuttle to fling after its final travelling to the ISS ended in March. Endeavour is the youngest, and flew its prototypal expanse assignment in 1991. STS-134 marks its 25th and final mission.

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

The another original members of the fast allow Enterprise, a test model that never flew in space, and river which disintegrated on its return to Earth in 2003.

A amount of 14 astronauts were killed in the river 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 seat until a newborn dweller satellite can be shapely by clannish enterprise, mayhap by 2015.

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