Image above: The Expedition 18 and 19 crew members, along with spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi, participate in an in-flight media interview. Credit: NASA TV

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Station crews proceed with handover activities

The Expedition 18 crew and the recently arrived Expedition 19 crew were busy working with various handover activities aboard the International Space Station Wednesday.

Commander Mike Fincke, KE5AIT, Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov, RA3DT and Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA of the Expedition 18 crew conducted a payload status check, inspected circuit breakers, and took biomedical samples to help measure the effects of long-term exposure of their bodies to the weightlessness of space.

Fincke and Lonchakov will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft on April 7 with spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi, KE7KDP who came to the station with the Expedition 19 crew on March 28.

Wakata, who arrived at the station with the STS-119 crew of space shuttle Discovery on March 17, will remain on the station as an Expedition 19 crew member.

Gennady Padalka, RN3DT

The Expedition 19 crew, Commander Gennady Padalka, RN3DT and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt, KD5MIJ familiarized themselves with the station’s exercise equipment on Wednesday.

They began their daily physical exercise routines using the station’s treadmill and Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). The ARED uses vacuum cylinders to mimic weightlifting exercises in the microgravity environment of space.

The new crew also recharged the batteries in a satellite phone that a Soyuz crew would use to contact search and recovery personnel in the event of an off-target landing.

Padalka performed an amateur radio session with school children in Montreal.

Simonyi spent time working with Earth observation and photography. The target for Wednesday was an area in southwestern Algeria that has features similar to some observed on Mars.