Shuttle starts journey home

WITH their fifth and final spacewalk under their belt, Endeavour’s astronauts took some well-deserved time off yesterday before starting the journey home.

Astronauts Michael Foreman and Robert Behnken sailed through their six-hour spacewalk on Saturday, attaching a 50-foot inspection pole to the international space station among other chores.

“You were just fabulous out there today,” astronaut Richard Linnehan told the pair as they floated back into the station.

The shuttle crew used the laser-tipped inspection boom at the beginning of their 16-day mission and again on Friday night to check for any damage to their spaceship as part of a routine safety procedure.

Discovery won’t have room for a boom when it flies in May because the Japanese Kibo lab is so big it will take up the entire payload bay. So Endeavour’s astronauts left theirs behind.

Foreman and Behnken hooked an extra-long power cord to the inspection pole, to keep its lasers and cameras warm for the next two months, then secured the boom to the outside of the space station.

Foreman then inspected a jammed rotating joint that has restricted the use of a set of solar wings for months. NASA hopes to have a plan for dealing with the jammed joint by the end of the month, space station flight director Dana Weigel said.

Meanwhile, Behnken finally succeeded in hanging some scientific experiments to the European Columbus lab. He had trouble getting the containers to latch down during an earlier spacewalk but succeeded this time.

“I’m proud... of you two guys,” Endeavour commander Dominic Gorie said as the two finished their work.

Endeavour arrived at the orbiting complex on March 12, delivering the first section of the Kibo lab and a robot with 11-foot arms designed to assist future spacewalkers.

Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the space station tonight and land back at Kennedy Space Centre on Wednesday.