[Commentator:] The onboard crew is in the early afternoon of their crew day.
They have a wide range of tasks today including station hardware configurations,
departure preparations and experiment work.
Ron Garan and Mike Fossum have just completed a news conference with journalists
from the Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center.
Questions included the crew's thoughts regarding the Russian spacecraft as well as the fragility
of the planet and the value of continuous human presence on the space station.
Garan will now resume preparations for his return to Earth next week,
packing up supplies and equipment.
He will return to earth with Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev
in the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft early next Friday.
Later in his afternoon Garan will also work
on the Human Research Facility preparing for a DVD load transfer.
Garan and Fossum will end the day with routine private medical conferences,
then they and Satoshi Furukawa will also participate in the Reaction Self Test.
That is a portable five-minute reaction time test that allows the crew members
to monitor the daily effects of fatigue and performance
on performance while on board the space station.
[Mike Fossum:] Yeah, go ahead.
[CAPCOM:] Mike uh...
got caught uh...
with a little bit of blockage before that TDRS handover before I could correct my last call.
The second pass cupola window number four is actually going
to be better than window number one.
[Mike Fossum:] Yeah, copy that.
You guys don't need to give us windows,
just port or starboard is all we need and that will be totally cool.
The window kind of changes as your going by and stuff.
[CAPCOM:] Copy that.
Thanks for the info.
[Commentator:] Again, a bit of an update there from the onboard crew to the capcom.
[Mike Fossum:] And I had a follow-up question.
Did you guys actually confirm that the state park in Bastrop is one
of the directly affected areas with the fire in that region?
[CAPCOM:] Station Houston.
Uh... yes Mike.
Unfortunately that's true.
The news agencies are reporting up to two-thirds of the park has been burned and hundreds
of homes in the area have been destroyed.
[Mike Fossum:] Oh, wow.
Wow. That's rough news.
Thanks. We are really thinking about all those folks though there.
[CAPCOM:] Copy that Mike.
And the COTS lab is working on getting some information up to you via your web pages.
[Commentator:] Some words there
to NASA Astronaut Mike Fossum who is an avid outdoorsman.
He is an experienced scout leader and hiker.
He had inquired earlier of the flight control team about any
of the wildfire damage that's been occurring in Texas,
including some of his favorite areas there, as relayed by Jay Marschke the capcom on duty,
there has been some impacts to that area.
Flight Control Teams also researched photo opportunities of the wildfires.
They do anticipate some possible viewing opportunities in the next hour or so.
We will certainly be relaying those as will be our website.
Fossum is deactivating television equipment following the crew news conference
that was recently completed.
The rest of his afternoon includes connecting some of the umbilical lines for one
of the Express science racks, then exercise on the treadmill
and Water Recovery System maintenance.
The crew will end their day with the daily planning conference at 1:50,
one-five-zero p.m. Central Time followed by off-duty time.
They are scheduled for crew sleep at 4:30 p.m. Central Time.
The crew woke at 1 a.m. Central Time which is their standard start of day.
They had their morning inspection and then some routine body mass measurements were part
of a ongoing study of changes in the body mass for long-duration crew members.
They also had the some personal time for breakfast
and hygiene before their start-of-day daily planning conference.
The morning tasks included work on HDTV configurations by Satoshi Furukawa,
and also he performed a scenario on board diagnostic kit demonstration or ultrasound work
which is a part of a medical experiment.
Mike Fossum continued with the troubleshooting of the ARED,
or Advanced Resistive Exercise Device display and also took
about an hour to exercise on that device.
He also worked on removal of payload related cargo stored in the PMM,
or the Permanent Multi-purpose Module.
This again a current view of the International Space Station.
Just within the last hour, the external cameras mounted on the vehicle were able
to capture some views of the hurricane.
We can replay some of that footage for you, again captured just about 45 minutes ago
as external cameras captured video of Hurricane Katia as it moved northwest
across the western Atlantic north of Puerto Rico.
This occurred at 10:35 a.m. Eastern Time earlier today.
Katia has strengthened into a major Category 3 hurricane packing winds of 125 miles per hour
and could strengthen even more before taking a northern and then northeastern track east
of the east coast of the United States.