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Crew wraps up busy holiday week

The three Expedition 16 crew members aboard the International Space Station wrapped up the last full work week of 2007 with science experiments and unloading and stowing materials from a cargo craft that arrived early Wednesday.

Image right: The Expedition 16 crew members pose for a Christmas photo in the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station. From the left are Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko, Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Dan Tani. Image credit: NASA

The crew worked Friday on a number of biomedical experiments that focus on the long-term effects of the station's microgravity environment on the human body. Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP, began the day winding up overnight operations of SONOCARD, a Russian experiment which monitors crew physiological functions during sleep.

Later Malenchenko participated in a study of the cardio-vascular system under stress by working out on the VELO, one of two bicycle-like exercise devices aboard the station, while biomedical equipment collected data on his physical condition. Commander Peggy Whitson, KC5ZTD, assisted Malenchenko.

Whitson and Flight Engineer Dan Tani, KD5DXE, each took turns working out with the CEVIS cycle ergometer while wearing a heart rate monitor to collect data for their own periodic fitness evaluations.

The crew continues to unload and stow supplies that arrived aboard the Progress 27 cargo craft on Wednesday.

The Progress docked to the space station's Pirs docking compartment at 3:14 a.m. EST Wednesday after a launch at 2:12 a.m. Dec. 23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.