This is Mission control Houston.
A very busy day onboard the International Space Station
as the crew onboard...Commander Dan Burbank, fellow NASA astronaut Don Pettit,
European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and Russian cosmonauts Anton SHkaplerov,
Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko continue there work.
Today's activities focusing on a variety of different experiment
and maintenance tasks aboard the orbiting outpost.
It's currently at an altitude of 240 statute miles on a southeasterly track
over Southeast Asia heading for a crossing over the central portion of Australia on this orbit.
Here in the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center in Houston,
Chris Edelen is the Flight Director on console in charge of the team.
He's got Josh Matthew available to talk with the crew on any number of different activities
that the crew might have questions or need information on.
And he's also got communication with flight control rooms around the world in Europe,
Russia and Japan where they are helping
to manage the experiment activities aboard the multinational research outpost.
Today another busy day as the crew is focusing primarily on the SLICE experiment
which is an experiment that looks at combustion and with research activities
into how the human body reacts to microgravity.
Dan Burbank also conducting some maintenance on the space station's food warmer device
and installing a couple of Joint Space Station Local Area Network power and data cables
into the Harmony module that will help connect it
to the European Space Agency lab and Columbus module.
Don Pettit again working with the SLICE operations
and Andre Kuipers is taking photographs of the evaluation and monitoring
of biofilms inside ISS or the Viable payload.
He's also doing some maintenance on the Waste Recovery System.
This is some live video of the cmbustion experiment that's going
on right now, the SLICE experiment.
For more information about that you can go to www.nasa.gov/slice or www.nasa.gov/station.
Just to recap the week, again it's been a very busy week onboard.
Monday the crew worked with some maintenance activities.
They did a replacement on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device.
It's one of the ropes that's used on the different exercises that they perform.
They also had a downlink for the NASA Future Forum honoring the 50th anniversary
of astronaut John Glenn's first American orbits of the Earth.
On Tuesday they worked with a variety of different experiments.
One of those the SPRINT experiment.
They also did some cleaning in the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module.
They worked with the Microgravity Small Payload Rack combustion chamber preparing it
for some samples.
On Wednesday, they had an educational event with a consortium of schools in New Jersey.
And they did alot ventilation system maintenance in the Columbus module.
They are checking all of those ventilation systems to make
that they are providing good air flow.
Here's some video of Dan Burbank who worked on that with Andre Kuipers in particular
as they checked all of the seals and the fans and the ventilation system ducts that are used
to circulate air throughout the space station making sure in this case that those
in the Columbus module are working very well.
Very important for the crew to have good air circulation
so that they don't have carbon dioxide bubbles form around their heads
which could be a health hazard for them.
They also had some EVA tool stowage activities.
Dan Burbank stowed the American pieces that were used by his Russian cosmonauts as they went
out the previous week on a spacewalk to move a large cargo boom on the outside
of the Pirs docking compartment to another docking compartment outside the station.
And the crew also worked on the Capillary Flow experiment.
This particular experiment portion was the Vane experiment where they look at how fluids flow
in unusually shaped containers with the goal to be able improve our understanding
of the mathematical models that are used to build in particular tanks that are used
to hold fluids for rocket engines that are used in space
as microgravity fluids flow differently.
This is video of some of the documentation
of that Capillary Flow experiment Vane system overview that occurred.
On Thursday, it was work with the Atmosphere Revitalization bacteria filter.
They did some cleaning on that and Don Pettit did some additional work
with the Capillary Flow experiment.
And that brings is up-to-date for this week.
The crew is going to have an easy weekend, just some routine maintenance activities
and some time off to rest and relax before they get back to their full workweek
of experiment activities later on next week.