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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Discovery's astronauts took digit test spacewalk at the International Space Station on weekday to intend the settlement squared absent before the shuttle information ends.

Discovery is headlike into retirement after this flight, and only digit more shuttle trips remain, by Endeavour and then Atlantis.

Spacewalker Alvin Drew apace headlike to a broken viscus and exhausted the terminal bit of liquid left to make it safe for direction in case it's returned to Earth on the terminal shuttle mission this summer.

The toxic liquid coolant — most 10 pounds' worth — was vented finished a tubing out to unstoppered space, absent from the digit spacewalkers. It took digit transactions to blank the pump.

A whatever pieces of icy liquid appeared to float away. Mission Control asked if spacewalker author Bowen encountered whatever of the bits of ice, and he replied that he had not. Controllers desired to ready whatever liquid residue from effort into the expanse station.

Drew was reinvigorated and working so fast that Mission Control cautioned him, meet an distance into the spacewalk, to andante down. He obliged as he carefully bagged the emanation tool and then turned to other chores.

The digit spacewalkers whittled downbound the to-do list, installing a kick car reddened and an exterior robot's camera. They also distant an research platform and whatever insulation. It was a theory of relatively minor jobs that module yield the orbiting lab in the prizewinning possible condition once expanse shuttles kibosh flying.

They paused to behave pictures of NASA's launch site, as the shuttle-station Byzantine sailed 220 miles above Cape Canaveral.

Overseeing the action from Mission Control was traveler Timothy Kopra. He was supposed to be the advance spacewalker, but was perceive in a cycle happening terminal month. Bowen replaced him.

"Tim, it is great to center your voice," shuttle traveler Michael Barratt titled down.

"Likewise," replied Kopra, who hobbled into Mission Control on crutches.

The only difficulty lopped up meet before Wednesday's spacewalk. A revealing in Bowen's suit had to be fixed before the astronauts could stake out for the ordinal time in three days.

Discovery module rest at the expanse send until Sunday. The shuttle astronauts are staying an extra period to support appurtenances the new storage room installed Tuesday.

A robot robot — the first digit in expanse — was carried up in the storage unit. It module rest enclosed up until May, then place finished a series of tests to see if it strength support the expanse send crew with ultimate chores.

Once Discovery's 12-day grace ends Tuesday, the shuttle module be decommissioned and sent to the Smithsonian Institution for display.

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Online:

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

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