Astronauts set new U.S. spaceflight record

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 12 (UPI) -- As the shuttle Endeavour crew prepared for a final spacewalk on Thursday before leaving the International Space Station, two astronauts who have staffed the outpost since early December broke the U.S. space flight endurance record.

"It's not something that set out to do, break a record like this," said Dan Bursch, who is to be taxied back to Earth on Monday, along with crewmate Carl Walz and station commander Yuri Onufrienko, a Russian cosmonaut.

"At this point, when we're within just several days of going home it's easy to say 'Well, yeah, it's been great and we're going home.' But we all miss our families," Bursch said during an in-flight news conference Wednesday. "We're really happy that everything's gone really well. We'll be happiest if we know that folks on the ground are proud of what we've done."

The record for the single longest stay in space by an American was set in 1996 by Shannon Lucid, who spent 188 days in orbit. Lucid was the third American to live aboard the Russian space station Mir. Her return home was delayed six weeks due to shuttle repairs.

Lucid is still the world record-holder for the longest space flight by a woman. The Russians, however, have far eclipsed the U.S. space endurance record for men, with a 483-day long mission by Valery Polyakov.

NASA has no plans to fly astronauts for longer than about 180 days.

"I really don't know what the upper limit is (for a long duration stay in space)," said Bursch. "If you go into it thinking you're going to have to be here longer, that's probably the best attitude to have ... It's important to stay busy doing things that you think are very valuable."

Added Walz, "It would be tremendously hard to prepare yourself for a year-and-a-half-long mission," in terms of having work and experiments planned to keep yourself busy.

The shuttle is scheduled to depart the station on Saturday. A final spacewalk to replace a defective wrist joint on the station's robot arm is scheduled for Thursday.