The hatches between space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station were closed at 3:08 a.m. EST Friday. During 9 days, 52 minutes of joint operations, the station got a new module and a viewport offering a valuable, enjoyable vantage.

Hatch closure came after a farewell ceremony by the two crews. Endeavour Commander George Zamka, Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken said their goodbyes in the Harmony module to Station Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineers Maxim Suraev, Oleg Kotov, Soichi Noguchi and T.J. Creamer.

As shuttle astronauts filed out of the forward end of Harmony, Williams formally rang the station bell marking their departure. Endeavour is scheduled to undock from the station at 7:54 p.m. Friday and land at Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 10:16 p.m. Sunday.

› View STS-130 farewell ceremony video at http://anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net/anon.nasa-global/ccvideos/sts130_f...

Zamka and Williams collaborated on a cupola ribbon-cutting ceremony, dedicating it to astronaut Charles Lacy Veach, who was instrumental in early development of the cupola. He flew on two shuttle flights, STS-39 in 1991 and STS-52 in 1992, and died of cancer in 1995.

They also placed in the cupola a moon rock returned by Apollo 11 and later carried to the summit of Mount Everest by former astronaut Scott Parazynski, along with chips from Everest. Zamka said that in continuing their journey for additional millions of miles, they will serve "as a reminder of man's reach and man's grit" as humans continue to explore.

› Listen to the ribbon-cutting ceremony (3.3 Mb MP3) at http://www.nasa.gov/mp3/428074main_sts130_cupola_ceremony.mp3

At 5:14 p.m. Wednesday, all 11 astronauts and cosmonauts on the docked vehicles received a congratulatory phone call from President Barack Obama, who was accompanied at the White House by a dozen middle school students from across the country who are in Washington, D.C. for a national engineering competition.

Source http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html