Astronauts zip through 5th and final spacewalk

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronauts completed the last spacewalk of their shared shuttle and station mission Monday, breezing through some rewiring, camera setups and other outdoor chores.

Christopher Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn got so far ahead on the flight’s fifth spacewalk that they even took on extra work, a welcome change from earlier excursions that were bogged down by balky equipment and other obstacles.

“We’re out of tasks,” Mission Control finally called up.

Only one item was left undone. Mission Control was reluctant to have the spacewalkers take on a drawn-out storage platform job, given the time remaining.

The spacewalk ended up lasting just under five hours and set the stage for shuttle Endeavour’s scheduled departure today.

Compared with the previous outings, this one included a hodgepodge of relatively mundane jobs.

The spacewalkers rearranged electrical hookups for a pair of gyroscopes, giving them separate power supplies, and folded down a piece of popped-up insulation on a small robot hand at the international space station. Then they hooked up two TV cameras on the brand new porch of a Japanese lab, installed by the two crews last week. The cameras will assist in experiment work on the porch and in the docking in two months of a Japanese cargo carrier.

“Congratulations, you guys just completed the ... assembly,” Mission Control radioed once the second camera was secured. Japan’s enormous $1 billion lab, named Kibo, or Hope, required three shuttle flights and took more than a year to finish.

With everything accomplished, Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the space station today afternoon, then spend three more days in orbit before returning to Earth on Friday.

In other space-related news, hundreds of earthlings in Oshkosh, Wis., turned their faces to the sky Monday to see an airplane built to launch a ship into space, watching the gleaming white craft soar overhead.

The twin-fuselage craft named WhiteKnightTwo, looking like two planes connected at the wing tips, circled the runway several times before touching down at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Air Venture annual gathering.

It was the first glimpse the public had of the plane, which was made by Virgin Galactic as part of its effort to jump-start commercial space travel. Its designers, engineer Burt Rutan and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, watched and smiled from the edge of the tarmac.

Virgin Galactic’s plan calls for WhiteKnightTwo to lift SpaceShipTwo, a pressurized spacecraft, into the atmosphere from a base in New Mexico. When they reach 50,000 feet, the spaceship would detach and blast into space at four times the speed of sound.

The six passengers would experience about five minutes of weightlessness and get a glimpse of Earth. The spaceship would glide back to Earth much like the space shuttle. Take-off to landing is expected to take about 21‚Ñ2 hours.

Virgin Galactic doesn’t have a launch date yet, but has taken 300 reservations at $200,000 each and is holding $40 million in deposits.