Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew are home after carrying Japan’s maiden space laboratory and a Canadian repair robot to the International Space Station (ISS) on a record-setting mission. Endeavour landed at the Kennedy Space Centre after a 16-day mission that included a record 12-day docking at the ISS and five spacewalks.
Spacewalking astronauts stashed an inspection boom to the outside of the International Space Station on Saturday to assure the next shuttle crew can scrutinise their ship for damage. Latching the boom to the outside of the station was the primary task of the fifth and final spacewalk conducted by the Endeavour crew.
A pair of astronauts ended a spacewalk late on Thursday in which they tested a repair procedure for the heat shields on the space-shuttle fleet — a technique Nasa hopes it never needs to use. During the over six-hour outing the pair also replaced a faulty circuit breaker and removed a thermal sock from the station’s new Canadian-built handyman robot.