Endeavour Astronauts Reach Halfway Point Of Long Flight
CAPE CANAVERAL (CBS4) – The crew of the shuttle Endeavour is preparing for the third spacewalk of the mission as they reach the halfway point of their 16-day mission.
Endeavour's six astronauts took it easy Tuesday, their eighth day in orbit. They put a new filter into a space station oxygen generator and, getting a little time off, soaked in the views more than 200 miles below. They sounded like excited children when the French beaches of Normandy appeared in the windows.
Two of the crew will venture back out Wednesday for the third spacewalk of the mission, to hook up some power cables to the Russian segment of the orbiting outpost. A fourth spacewalk will follow at the end of the week; the astronauts will attach the shuttle's inspection boom to the space station to give future crews extra reach for potential repairs.
On Monday, they said goodbye to three colleagues who headed home aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule after a five-month mission. Their capsule landed safely in Kazakhstan.
Before leaving however, the crew aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule took close-up images of the shuttle docked to the space station. The shuttle-station complex made a slow pivot and turn so the Soyuz could get good glamour shots with both a digital still camera and a high definition video camera. It's the first time another spaceship has taken close-up images of a shuttle docked to the ISS.
Now there are just nine people aboard the shuttle-station complex. They are the three space station residents and Endeavour's six-man crew commanded by Mark Kelly, husband of wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
In a series of TV interviews Tuesday morning, the astronauts said they will be sorry when Endeavour's final voyage comes to an end on June 1. Spaceman Gregory Chamitoff says the shuttle looks like it belongs "right here" at the International Space Station.
This is the 25th flight of Endeavour, the youngest of NASA's three remaining space shuttles. It was built to replace the lost Challenger and blasted off for the first time in 1992.
Discovery ended its flying career in March. Atlantis will take flight one last time in July to close out the 30-year space shuttle program.
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