Houston: As space shuttle Atlantis readies to return to earth with Indian-American Sunita Williams after her six-month sojourn at the International Space Station, the repaired station computers underwent a test for efficacy on Monday.
The shuttle is expected to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) sometime on Tuesday and land at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday.
"That's a big step in our checkout of the computers to make sure everything is working correctly," flight director Holly Ridings said. "It's one of those things we want to see before we undock."
Astronaut Sunita Williams spent her last day in space explaining details to her replacement at the space station, US astronaut Clay Anderson.
Sunita thanked flight controllers on the ground for their work during her stay in space in which she set a record for the longest single space flight by a woman. "I'm sad to say goodbye, but that means progress is being made and it's time for the international space station to grow a little more," she said.
"The (space station) will always be a part of me." Earlier, two US astronauts completed the fourth and final spacewalk of the Atlantis mission before the scheduled departure.
During the six-hour, 29-minute spacewalk on Sunday, mission specialists Patrick Forrester and Steven Swanson successfully completed all the tasks assigned to them, including the activation of the International Space Station's new truss segment.
They also installed a new set of solar panels and a shield to protect the station against meteors, besides removing an antenna for satellite navigation.
Attention now turns to the departure of Atlantis, which is slated to undock from the ISS on Tuesday and return to earth on Thursday. Williams, who on Saturday broke the record for the longest uninterrupted space flight by a woman, will be among the seven-member crew making the flight back.
'Suni', as she is called, came to the station in December in her first space flight. She will be relieved by Clayton Anderson, who came up with Atlantis and will remain on the ISS until October.
However, mission managers may yet decide to add a day of docked operations for the Atlantis crew if the Russian navigation computers do not perform adequately during a test on Monday morning.
The astronauts on Friday fixed the ISS computers after a 48-hour systems breakdown by bypassing a power switch with a jumper cable. Also, Atlantis' thermal blanket was fixed on Saturday, clearing the way for its return flight to earth after a 13-day mission that was extended by two days due to the damaged thermal protection system.
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