Spacewalking astronauts Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock switched their spacesuits off battery power at 1:22 p.m. EDT, marking the official end of the fourth and final excursion during Discovery's mission to the International Space Station.
A planned fifth spacewalk by station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko is being deferred until after Discovery departs the station. The outing, which is aimed at prepping the shuttle's conical docking port for a move to the Harmony module, now is scheduled to take place next Friday.
The spacewalk today began at 6:03 a.m. EDT and lasted seven hours and 19 minutes.
It was the seventh spacewalk for Parazynski, who now has tallied 47 hours and five minutes working in the void -- fifth on the list of all-time spacewalk champions.
Wheelock, a first-time flyer, now has booked three spacewalks for 20 hours and 41 minutes.
The spacewalk was the 96th devoted to station assembly and maintenance since the first two building blocks of the outpost were linked in late 1998. Total time now tallied: 596 hours and 14 minutes.
Space news and analysis from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral 
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