The Expedition 20 crew members got the opportunity to relax aboard the International Space Station Thursday, as they had a light-duty day before the upcoming nine-day handover to the Expedition 21 crew.
The Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft carrying Expedition 21 Flight Engineers Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Suraev and spaceflight participant Guy Laliberte, who is flying under an agreement between the Russian Federal Space Agency and Space Adventures, Ltd., is scheduled to dock with the station at 4:37 a.m. EDT Friday. The spacecraft executed a rendezvous burn Thursday. Suraev, Williams and Laliberte report they are in great shape.
The Soyuz launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:14 a.m. Wednesday.
The station crew used some of their off-duty time to try to complete the installation of the new COLBERT treadmill in the station's Harmony node, its temporary home.
Final activation and checkout of the treadmill – as well as its first use – are currently scheduled for late this month. COLBERT's permanent home will be the Tranquility node, which will be delivered to the orbital outpost next year.
Commander Gennady Padalka took photographs of Earth as part of the Russian Uragan Earth-imaging program, which is a ground- and space-based system for predicting natural and manmade disasters.
Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko worked with the Russian experiment Plants-2, which researches growth and development of plants under spaceflight conditions in a greenhouse facility in the Zvezda service module.
Flight Engineers Michael Barratt, Frank De Winne, Robert Thirsk and Nicole Stott used the Space Linear Acceleration Mass Measurement Device, or SLAMMD, to perform body mass measurements.
SLAMMD measures the on-orbit mass of crew members by applying Newton's Second Law of Motion (force is equal to mass times acceleration) using the known force generated by two springs against a crew member mounted on an extension arm. The resultant acceleration of the crew member is measured and the mass then calculated.
Laliberte will depart the station with Expedition 20 crew members Padalka and Barratt in their Soyuz TMA-14 on Oct. 10. Padalka and Barratt launched to the station on March 26.
Romanenko, Stott, Thirsk and De Winne will transition to the Expedition 21 crew with the departure of Padalka and Barratt. With the inauguration of Expedition 21, De Winne of the European Space Agency will become the first European commander of the orbiting complex.
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