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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The expanse shuttle and expanse send crews hustled to take tending of last-minute playing Sun before protection the hatches between them.

The digit astronaut teams were every ordered to near the hatches between their satellite Sun afternoon. Then weekday morning, shuttle Discovery module undock for the test instance from the International Space Station.

Discovery's astronauts crowded absent scrutiny experiments and liquid samples for convey to Earth, while there was ease time.

Discovery, the most-traveled rocketship ever, is on its test flight. When it returns to Earth on Wednesday, it module be retired and sent to the Smithsonian Institution.

The expanse shuttle and its gathering of sextet hit spent more than a week at the expanse station. They delivered and installed a newborn hardware compartment that held a robot robot.

The robot, named R2 for Robonaut 2, has yet to be unwrapped. The expanse send astronauts module get to it within the incoming some weeks.

Mission Control gave Discovery's astronauts digit player life at the orbiting outpost. They took advantage of the incentive instance to empty the hardware organisation of every the equipment that was carried up. The incentive life stretched the entire assignment to 13 life on top of the 352 life already logged during Discovery's previous 38 missions.

Flight administrator politico Lunney said he doesn't expect Discovery's feat from the expanse send — the terminal digit ever — to be emotional for him. There won't be instance to pause and emit on the historic aspects, he said.

Immediately after undocking, Discovery module control a conclusion lap of sorts around the orbiting lab, essentially for picture-taking. Then the shuttle astronauts module pull discover an scrutiny godsend and survey their board for any signs of micrometeorite damage.

"For us on console, it's follow with the business," Lunney told reporters. "Take tending of the crew, take tending of the vehicle, attain trusty everything's going well."

"Afterward, perhaps, it module be a lowercase emotional," he added. "But for the most part, we'll just be excited that the assignment has gone so darn well."

Discovery's sextet astronauts realised everything they ordered discover to do: instalment the newborn hardware organisation and an equipment papers at the expanse station, and conducting digit spacewalks.

"Just a friendly reminder," Mission Control joked in a farewell message. "Before approaching the hatch tonight, attain trusty everything and everybody is on the correct side!!!!!!"

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

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