Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas

Astronauts Patrick Forrester and Steve Swanson completed the fourth and final spacewalk of Atlantis' mission at 5:54 p.m. CDT, wrapping up all the tasks planned for the mission and finishing some jobs that will reduce the workload for future spacewalkers.

The spacewalk was the 87th in support of station assembly and maintenance, the 59th staged out of the station and the 36th out of the Quest airlock. Eleven spacewalks have been completed this year and 14 remain.

Forrester and Swanson began the spacewalk at 11:25 a.m. The two made quick work of retrieving a TV camera and its support structure from a stowage platform attached to Quest and installing it on the S/3 truss. They then verified the Drive Lock Assembly (DLA) 2 configuration and removed the last six Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ) launch restraints.

Inside, Mission Specialist Jim Reilly choreographed the outside work from the shuttle flight deck, shadowed by Expedition 15 Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov who will assume that role for the July 20 spacewalk by Clay Anderson and Fyodor Yurchikhin.

By 3:17 p.m., the two had cleared the path on S3 for the Mobile Base System by removing temporary rail stops and hardware that had secured the S3/S4 in the shuttle's payload bay, thus completing the major tasks slated for the STS-117 mission. The spacewalkers then began some of the get-ahead tasks mission managers had hoped to complete.

The two spacewalkers also installed a computer network cable on the Unity node, opened the hydrogen vent valve on the Destiny laboratory that was installed on Friday's spacewalk, and tethered two orbital debris shield panels on the station's service module.

Tomorrow morning at approximately 9:28 a.m., Mission Control in Moscow plans to fire Russian attitude control thrusters. The thrusters have not been used since the Russian central computer and terminal computer went down earlier in the week. Those computers continue in stable operation.

Also tomorrow, astronauts onboard Atlantis will have a much deserved day off, bidding farewell to the Expedition 15 crew and closing the hatch between the two vehicles at 5:23 p.m. Atlantis will undock from the station at 9:42 a.m. CDT Tuesday, circling the orbiting complex once as it departs.

The next STS-117 status report will be issued Monday morning or earlier if events warrant.

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