Astronauts make final shuttle era spacewalk

Two astronauts ventured out on the last spacewalk of the space shuttle era yesterday.

In a departure from previous shuttle visits, the job fell to space station crew Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan.

It was the 160th spacewalk in the 12-year life of the orbiting station, and the last one planned for Americans for nearly a year.

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The pair paused to admire the view as the linked craft soared above the Kennedy Space Centre, from which Atlantis departed last Friday on the very last shuttle flight. They then headed to a storage platform to repair an ammonia coolant pump that stopped working last July and, for more than two weeks, left the space station with only half its cooling capability.

US space agency NASA wants the pump brought back to Earth aboard Atlantis so engineers can work out why it stopped working to help them keep the on-board station pumps running.

While the spacewalk unfolded, most of the eight astronauts inside worked to unload the nearly five tons of supplies delivered in a giant cargo carrier by Atlantis. It represents a year’s worth of food, clothes and other housekeeping items, to tide the crew over in case commercial rocket makers fall behind in their own cargo runs. The first such haul is supposed to take place by year’s end.

The cargo canister, 21ft long and 15ft across and named Raffaello – also carried spare parts for the station.

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First on the unpacking list, so-called crew preference items, said flight director Jerry Jason. The six space station residents already received a bag of fresh fruit - the shuttle astronauts hand-delivered that immediately after Sunday’s docking - and were promised extra jars of peanut butter.

All 10 astronauts will spend the next week unloading the contents of Raffaello and filling the chamber back up with packing material, and space station garbage and old equipment.

Four astronauts are flying on Atlantis – the smallest shuttle crew in decades – and six on the space station. They represent the United States, Russia and Japan.

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