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[ Music ]
>> Good Thursday morning, April 4th, 2013.
You're looking
at the International Space Station Flight Control Room,
as a team of flight controllers once again looks over all
of the systems aboard the International Space Station
to those systems operating
in excellent shape aboard the complex, as this team
of flight controllers has been on console
since early this morning on about a 9-hour shift
that allows teams of flight controllers to overlap
and support station operations around the clock here
in Houston 24 hours a day.
You are looking at the team from the front corner of the room.
The team today, once again,
is led by Flight Director Mike Lammers.
He's joined by David Saint-Jacques, who is serving
as the communications link between this flight control team
and the crew on board the International Space Station.
That space station at 250 miles
above the earth's surface is just
about to track off the southern tip of Kamchatka,
as it begins a north --
a northeasterly to then southeasterly track
across the Pacific Ocean into an orbital sunrise
in about 20 minutes midway across the Pacific.
From this vantage point the crew sees an orbital sunrise
and sunset every 45 minutes or so.
16 orbits a day make up the 24-hour orbital period
of the International Space Station.
The Expedition 35 crew aboard the complex comprised
of six crew members --
the Commander of Expedition 35 Chris Hatfield
from the Canadian Space Agency seated on the right of the logo
in this view, standing behind him his two colleagues Roman
Romanenko and Doctor Tom Marshburn arrived
at the station aboard their Soyuz spacecraft back
in mid-December.
They plan to return home in the late evening of Monday May 13th,
that's the current targeted return home time
for those three crew members.
They are enjoying their 105th day aboard the International
Space Station, 107 days total in space.
The three newest crew members celebrating one week now aboard
the International Space Station,
and also of course one week since their launch.
That three additional crew members of Expedition 35,
made up of US astronaut Chris Cassidy
and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov
and Alexander Misurkin, those three arrived
at the station one week ago, late at night
on Thursday, March 28th.
They plan to stay aboard the station
until around September 11th is the current targeted return home
time for those three crew members, after about 5
and a half months in space.
The six crew members wake up about 1:00
in the morning central time each day,
and that was no different today.
They held their normal routine daily planning conference --
it was very short this morning --
at 2:30, shortly after they completed all
of their morning chores aboard the station.
And they're now headed off in a different direction
to support all of the scientific investigations,
the focus of which for Chris Cassidy today is the burning
and suppression of solids experiment.
He's essentially reviewing all of the procedures
for the future work that he'll be doing with that experiment.
There's a number of other experiments,
the binary colloids alloy test,
its hardware setup activities ongoing today aboard the station
as well.
The Russian cosmonauts over in the Russian segment
of the station have continued to review documents in preparation
for a Russian-based spacewalk scheduled for mid-April.
And of course the crew members spend time with all
of their normal activities, housekeeping chores,
and exercise routines
to maintain their cardiovascular musculoskeletal systems
for their long duration stays in space.
So life aboard the station continues,
and here on the ground the teams have continued
with the activities associated with continuing
to activate the new communications system
on board the station.
Today is day three of that activity,
which essentially is continuing with some checkouts
of some video cameras on board the station,
and of course sets the stage for the final installation
of the communications unit number 1,
which will occur a week from today
on Thursday next week, April 11th.
So that's the day for the Expedition 35 crew aboard the
International Space Station, as the station is
in excellent shape orbiting the earth every 92 minutes.
[ Silence ]