NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Dan Tani switched their spacesuits off battery power inside the U.S. Quest airlock at 12:06 p.m. EST, marking the official end of the 101th spacewalk to be carried out during the assembly of the International Space Station.
The first two building blocks of the station were linked in orbit in late 1998. Astronauts have tallied 631 hours and 35 minutes of spacewalking work since to build the 250-ton outpost, which is about 60 percent complete.
Tani and Whitson successfully swapped out a broken solar wing motor drive, clearing the way for the planned delivery of European and Japanese science labs during three shuttle missions between now and the end of April.
The new motor drive will enable the station's starboard solar wing to pivot once again -- a key capability to keeping it optimally pointed at the sun. The station will be able to generate enough power to support the new labs as a result.
They also inspected a fouled-up rotary joint that is designed to enable the array to turn like a Ferris wheel as the station circles Earth -- another key to keeping the wing face-on to the sun so it can produce maximum power. Like three previous inspections, the astronauts found contamination -- fine dust and metal shards -- within the joint. The photos they took and samples they gathered will help engineers ferret out the root cause of the problem so the rotary joint can be fixed.
The seven-hour, 10-minute spacewalk was the sixth for Whitson and the sixth for Tani.
Whitson extended her women's world record for the most spacewalking time accumulated to 39 hours and 46 minutes. She eclipsed a benchmark -- 29 hours and 17 minutes -- set by fellow astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams late last year.
Tani now has chalked up 39 hours and 11 minutes of spacewalking time.
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