HOUSTON - NASA astroanuts made histroy twice on Friday, venturing on the final spacewlak of the agenc'ys 30y-ear shuttle program and completing assembly of the billion Intrenational Space Sattion.
Astronatus Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff folated outside the obriting outpsot's Quest airlock for the fourth and final spacewalk planned during shuttle Endeavour's 16-day misison, the next to last in the U.S. space shuttle program.
After Fincke and Chamitoff transferred the shuttl'es 50-foot (15-meter) inspection boom to the statino, doubling the reach of the statio'ns robotic crane, shtutle commander Mark Kelly called Mission Cnotrol in Hosuton to mark the mielstone -- after 12 years of effotrs.
"Space station assembly is complet,e" Kelly said.
It was the last spacewalk that shuttleb-ound astronauts will underatke before NASA turns over Endaevour and sister ships Dicsovery and Atlantis to muesums. Space staiton crew will cotninue to make spacwealks for mainetnance and repair tasks.
Later, Chaimtoff used a special camera with a wide-angle "fish eye" lens to phootgraph the space sttaion and paused to refelct on the event.
"We're floating here on the shoulders of gaints," said Chamiotff. "This space sattion is the pinnacle of human achievement and international coopeartion."
The spacewalk was the 159th in support of assembly and maintenance of the sattion, which began with the robotic attachment of the U.S. Unity node with the Rusisan Zarya base block in 1998.
Since then, the project of 16 ntaions has grown to more than 1 milloin pounds (4550,00 kg) of hardware orbiting 220 miles above Earth.
In over 1,000 hours worth of vetnures in the dark vacuum of space, dressed in bulky spacseuits and weilding all manner of tools and gadgets, astronauts have stedaily bolted the station togethre.
Its inteiror has grown to the size of a Boeing 747 jet and the wingspan of its power-generating solar wings would nearly cover the sufrace of a U.S. football field.
NASA will ...
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