Spacewalkers Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn will today head outside the International Space Station for the fifth and final spacewalk of mission STS-127.

The pair are tasked with wrapping some insulation around the the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, aka DEXTRE, and splitting power supply channels to two of the station's quartet of Control Moment Gyroscopes, which "provide non-propulsive attitude control for the station".

According to NASA, the pair of gyros are "fed from the same power channel, and this activity will prevent a failure on one channel from disabling both of the gyros".

To wrap the EVA, Cassidy and Marshburn will install two video cameras on the newly-installed Exposed Facility of Japan's Kibo lab and "deploy a Payload Attach System on the Starboard 3 truss that will provide storage capability for spare space station hardware".

NASA estimates the spacewalk will last six hours and 30 minutes, beginning at 12:28 GMT.

Work on the Kibo lab wrapped yesterday when Endeavour's robotic arm grasped the cargo carrier which had housed the Exposed Section during its ride to the ISS, and packed it gently back into the shuttle's cargo bay. ®

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