Washington, May 20: US astronauts Thursday completed the second of three planned spacewalks from the shuttle Atlantis on its rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Mission Specialists Stephen Bowen and Michael Good completed their seven-hour spacewalk at 1:47 pm (local time), finishing a checklist of housekeeping chores that included tightening up bolts connecting the space-to-ground antenna dish and boom.
They also removed the tether that had been holding the dish and boom together and released the launch locks, allowing the antenna dish to rotate.
During a first spacewalk on Monday, Atlantis astronauts installed a space-to-ground communications antenna and a spare parts platform on Dexter, the two-armed robotic device on the orbiting ISS.
The shuttle and its crew of six docked with the orbiting space lab Sunday, about 350 kilometres above the South Pacific.
During the 13-day mission, Atlantis and its crew will unload more than 12 tons of equipment, including the communications antenna, power storage batteries, and a radiator.
The voyage is the last scheduled mission for Atlantis, which first launched in 1985 and has logged some 115 million miles in its career.
Only two more shuttle launches remain — one in September for Discovery and the final blast off for Endeavour in November — before the curtain falls on this era of human spaceflight. (AFP)
–Agencies