NASA STS-134 Report #13 10 a.m. CDT Sunday, May 22, 2011

Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

HOUSTON – It turned into a long day for the Endeavour spacewalkers outside the International Space Station as they worked to complete all of the assigned maintenance tasks.

Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel and Mike Fincke wrapped up their 8-hour, 7-minute spacewalk at 9:12 a.m. They topped off ammonia in a cooling loop, lubricated a solar array joint on the port truss and one of the hands on Dextre, one of the station’s Canadian robotic arms, and installed stowage beams near the middle of the main truss.

The first task was rerouting an ammonia jumper cable between cooling loops on port-side truss segments, between P3 and P4. With that done, they moved to top off ammonia in a slowly leaking P6 cooling loop, adding about 5 pounds to the loop, which has a capacity of about 55 pounds.

With that complete, Fincke moved to the port solar alpha rotary joint, which allow the solar arrays to track the sun, and began to remove covers over the joint so he could lubricate its race ring. After some difficulty – one bolt holding the covers was lost – mission control decided he should remove four of the covers instead of the six originally planned.

After Fincke did the first of two planned lubrications of the race ring, flight controllers began a partial rotation of the port array joint to spread the race-ring lubricant. During that rotation, the two spacewalkers restored the ammonia jumper cables to their original positions.

Feustel’s next task was installing a camera cover on Dextre, also known as the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, and lubricating one of the robot’s hands. Endeavour Pilot Greg Johnson and station Flight Engineer Cady Coleman used the Canadarm2 to carry Dextre to Feustel.

Coleman was in her last full day aboard the station before her planned return to Earth Monday with fellow Expedition 27 crew members, Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli.

Fincke installed two radiator grapple bar stowage beams on the starboard, S1 truss segment. The partial array rotation complete, he and Feustel returned to the joint to give it a second round of lubrication.

Next they reinstalled three of the four joint covers. The fourth was returned to the airlock and will be installed later.

The Intravehicular officer, coaching them through their activities, was Greg Chamitoff. He participated in the first spacewalk and is scheduled for the mission’s fourth and final spacewalk. Astronaut Steve Swanson served as spacewalk capcom in the station flight control room in Houston’s Mission Control Center. Commander Mark Kelly readied the spacewalkers and then documented the day through photos and video.

The spacewalk was the fifth for Feustel and the seventh for Fincke – the previous six were in Russian suits. It was the 157th for station assembly and maintenance and the 246th by U.S. astronauts.

Johnson got in about three hours of stowage work Sunday, while Mission Specialist Roberto Vittori spent much of his afternoon transferring equipment and supplies between Endeavour and the station and with stowage.

At 10:31 a.m., Dmitry Kondratyev, who has been the commander of Expedition 27 aboard the International Space Station, conducted a ceremonial change of command with Andrey Borisenko, who will command Expedition 28. Kondratyev, European Space Agency Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli and Coleman will return to Earth Monday night inside their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft that launched to the station Dec. 15. Expedition 28 will officially begin at the moment of Soyuz undocking.

The next status report will be issued after crew wakeup or earlier if warranted.