Two astronauts Saturday completed a final seven-hour spacewalk to finish hooking up the Italian-made Harmony module to the International Space Station (ISS), according to DPA. Four days after their last spacewalk, ISS commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Dan Tani carried out the work two weeks before the next set of components are to arrive at the orbiting laboratory. Whitson and Tani successfully finished hooking up electrical and fluid connections between the Destiny laboratory - the space station's main room - and the Harmony node. The astronauts also inspected a rotary joint of one of the station's solar arrays, which have been experiencing higher than expected friction. Fixing the joint is important for the station's continued assembly in the future. Harmony provides three extra sleeping spaces for station astronauts and becomes the vital mother link for new modules to be delivered in coming months. The European-made Columbus module is set to arrive on the next shuttle, Atlantis, due to launch December 6 from the Kennedy Space Centre on Florida's Atlantic Coast at Cape Canaveral. The Harmony module - produced under agreement with the European Space Agency - was delivered last month by the Space Shuttle Discovery, but was left in a temporary parking space until ISS astronauts could move the addition to its intended location. The space station occupants have been busy since then moving Harmony to its permanent spot and rearranging various portals outside the station to accommodate the new arrangements. NASA is pressing to finish ISS construction before 2010, when the ageing shuttle fleet is slated to be retired - with some of the orbiters more than two decades old. NASA will then shift focus to a return to the moon.
