Astronaut Greg Chamitoff snapped this "fish eye" view of the International Space Station during his spacewalk on Friday. The nose of the shuttle Endeavour is visible in the upper left. Photo Credit/NASA Photo
Endeavour’s “can do” crew began to wrap up a productive visit to the International Space Station on Saturday, with a flurry of upgrades to internal life support systems.
Astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff, who marched through the mission’s fourth spacewalk on Friday, turned their efforts toward the carbon dioxide removal system in the station’s U. S. segment on Saturday. Earlier this week, Endeavour’s crew upgraded the U. S. oxygen generator, which enriches the breathing air with oxygen from re-cycled water.
Both are essential to long term, six-person operations aboard the orbiting science laboratory — especially when NASA’s shuttle program retires after the July flight of Atlantis.
“You have a can-do crew here,” said Fincke, as work on the hardware that scrubs carbon dioxide from the station’s atmosphere wrapped up.
Late Friday, Fincke became the American with the most time in space, as he surged past the 377 day mark held by NASA Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson. Fincke accumulated most of his time on two previous missions, when he served as the space station commander and flight engineer. The world’s record of 803 days is held by Russian Sergei Kirkalev.
“It’s been a great ride,” said Fincke, who predicted his record will fall soon.
Mike Fincke, right, set a new U. S. record for time in space, eclipsing the old mark of 377 days. Fincke is pictured with Endeavour astronaut Roberto Vittori, during a training session. Photo Credit/NASA Photo
Endeavour’s six astronauts, who have been docked to the station since May 18, are scheduled to undock on Sunday, just before midnight. They are due back on Earth on Wednesday with a pre-dawn landing at the Kennedy Space Center, ending a 16-day mission.
“I’m really pleased with all the work we got done and all the high priority objectives we have behind us,” Derek Hassmann, NASA’s lead space station flight director, said Saturday.
Endeavour’s crew, led by Commander Mark Kelly, successfully delivered the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an external particle detector designed to search for primordial antimatter and dark matter, to the station. Scientists believe the mysterious materials emerged from the big bang and helped to shape the evolution of the universe.
Endeavour’s crew also equipped the space station with spare parts for the communications, thermal control and electrical systems.
During their four spacewalks, the astronauts upgraded the space station’s Russian segment, with backup power cables and an anchor for the station’s robot arm. The robot arm also received a 50-foot extension boom that will enable future station crews to reach remote areas of the space station while on spacewalks.
With all of the external activity, the total amount of time devoted to spacewalks by Russian, European, Japanese and Canadian as well as NASA astronauts during the 13-year assembly of the orbital outpost passed the 1,000 hour mark during Endeavour’s flight.