Image above: The Niagara River, eastern end of Lake Erie and western end of Lake Ontario are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 15 crew member on the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA

• Watch NASA TV
Preparations continue for next week's spacewalk

In the Pirs Docking Compartment, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov continued preparations for the upcoming spacewalk on May 30.

Activities included charging an Orlan battery, installing hardware on the spacesuits, preparing auxiliary equipment for the suits, setting up additional portable air repress bottles and separating liquid and gas in the cooling systems.

Using the airlock requires it to be isolated from the ISS Progress 24 cargo ship docked to it. To this end, Yurchikhin, RN3FI and Kotov installed the docking mechanism, closed the hatches and performed leak checks.

Wednesday's station reboost by the ISS Progress 25 thrusters was successful. The purpose of the maneuver was to position the station for the STS-117 launch in June.