All ISS systems continue to function nominally, except as noted previously or below.

The station crew has a rest day today, but with the visiting crew's activities continuing, there was much bustle on board.

Afanasyev and Kozeyev conducted HDTV (high-definition TV) operations with MCC-M, in the commercial SWEAT operation.

Claudie Haigneré monitored active Andromeda experiments and checked temperatures of the AKVARIUS payload. Early in the day, she conducted another Télépont (spacebridge) PAO interchange with officials, journalists and students at Toulouse, France (home of French space agency CNES).

The crew was congratulated by the ground on yesterday's excellent support of the "Prince of Asturias" award ceremony at Oviedo, Spain. There were many happy faces at ESA and among the Partnership for an honor bestowed upon the ISS that is richly deserved. Next Friday, 11/2, marks the first anniversary of human occupancy of the ISS since Shepherd and his crew floated into what was then a fledgling space station. To celebrate this anniversary, the crew will participate in a U.S. PAO event next week, on Tuesday, 11/30, on two network morning news shows: CBS' "The Early Show" and ABC's "Good Morning, America". Legendary Walter Cronkite will be discussing human spaceflight and the significance of this anniversary for CBS, and either Diane Sawyer or Charlie Gibson will conduct the interview for the "Good Morning, America" portion of the event.

The crew also downlinked a Russian TV address on the occasion of the 85th birthday of Academician Sheremetievsky.

PLT Dezhurov and FE-1 Tyurin completed a run of the DIURESIS urine analysis protocol, and CR-3 Kozeyev spent most of the day with the Plasma Crystal-3 experiment. The crew also took HDTV scenes for PAO purposes.

Today's targets for the Russian DIATOMEYA program, which looks for bioproductivity of the world's oceans, were the Atlantic Ocean (Canary Islands, Madeira, Gibraltar, Mediterranean Sea, Jamaica, Cuba, Bahamas, contour currents, Gulf of Mexico, Florida current, Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current).

The TCS (thermal control system) in the Lab is now fully redundant again after the ground successfully overcame a "bit flip" in a control EEPROM (electrically erasable reprogrammable read-only memory) chip and restored the system to its dual-loop operation.

The hot fire test of the Soyuz TM-32 thrusters is scheduled for Monday, 10/29, at 3:21 am EST. ISS attitude will be moded to free drift for the test. Undocking of the Soyuz with the taxi crew will then follow on 10/30, at 8:39pm EST (1:39am, 10/31 in GMT).

Hoffman-Reflex: The next and final H-R session is scheduled to occur within the last three weeks of the Increment.

Pulmonary Function in Flight: The next monthly session for the PuFF investigation is scheduled for next Tuesday.

Renal (Kidney) Stone Experiment: The next and final Renal Stone session is scheduled to occur in mid-November.

Bonner Ball Neutron Detector: The crew was thanked for helping to get BBND files down last Wednesday. Preliminary evaluation indicates that the BBND did not record any data while it showed the recent LED (light-emitting diodes) anomalies. Now the BBND is back on track recording valuable neutron data.

Human Research Facility (HRF) Hardware: The PC data downlink performed on Thursday went perfectly. The HRF staff on the ground received 200 PuFF files..

Cellular Biotechnology Support Systems (CBOSS): The post-experiment cold storage phase in the BTR (biotechnology refrigerator) is in progress. Principal investigators are looking forward to receiving the samples in December..

Dynamically Controlled Protein Crystal Growth: The DCPCG staff thanked the crew for keeping their CRIM-M displays" straight" during EXPRESS Rack #1 power recycling/reset activities. The ground reports that everything is back to current nominal operating state and that interesting data are being collected again.

Physics of Colloids in Space: PCS' 60 hours of operations focused on the aging of the colloid polymer gel. A combination of dynamic and low-angle dynamic light scattering were used to examine the slow changes taking place in this gel. Preliminary analysis of this data seems to indicate that the col-pol sample, which does not form rigid, irreversible bonds, is aging in a way very similar to gels that do. The science team is excited to observe this behavior in this sample. Perhaps the most surprising data this week may show that the col-pol gel has a resonance near the frequencies of the mechanical modes of the ISS. The Harvard team is working on ways to confirm this hypothesis. In addition to the measurements on the col-pol gel, regular observations of the binary colloid and colloidal glass samples were performed. Although most of the crystallization process has completed in these samples, they continue to evolve slowly and there is some possibility of observing a restructuring of the crystals.

Space Acceleration Measurement System: SAMS continued successful operations this week and collected acceleration data during Soyuz docking.

Microgravity Acceleration Measurement System: MAMS continues collecting acceleration data for the characterization of the ISS microgravity environment. MAMS collected acceleration data during Soyuz docking.

Materials ISS Experiment (MISSE): Nominal and collecting data.

Advanced Protein Crystallization Facility (APCF): Nominal and collecting data.

Active Rack Isolation System - Isolation Characterization Experiment: A series of tests with the rack AAA fan turned off were conducted Friday evening, 10/19. An umbilical changeout to another set of ARIS-ICE power umbilicals was successfully completed Wednesday, 10/24. These new umbilicals provide even better isolation performance than that provided by the first improved umbilical set tested and dramatically better performance than the standard ARIS power umbilicals. Several hammer tests were successfully completed Friday, 10/26, with the EXPPCS acoustic closeout cover removed. These tests, which included one with the AAA fan turned off, are designed to characterize the high-frequency ARIS isolation performance (above 30 Hz) and identify the contribution of the EXPPCS acoustic cover to the rack dynamics.

EarthKAM: Deactivation of the EarthKAM system was confirmed on 10/17. The system was operational for 6 days, with the initial setup occurring on 10/9. In all there were 19 schools participating and one university with 180 student teachers, who combined to command 647 images. All images have been downlinked. All EarthKAM images are available for public access on the EarthKAM datasystem at: http://earthkam.sdsc.edu/cgi-bin/datasys/ek_images_station . EarthKAM supported a crew request from CDR Culbertson to set up the EarthKAM system and capture digital images of the Soyuz relocation maneuver on the ISS. Students created the procedures for the system to be located in the Node 1 Nadir hatch window aimed at the new Russian Docking compartment. The camera settings were modified to accommodate the change in target and a camera control file containing 79 photo commands was created and tested to capture the duration of the 40-minute flight.

CEO targets today were the Nile Supersite (Nile River Valley is currently experiencing its annual flood. Of interest: sunglint views on river and water distribution canals. Further south Lake Nasser also appears in glint), and the California Central Valley (vegetation color signatures continue to change as soil moisture from the last ENSO (El Nino) event (1997-1998) dries out. Inter-ENSO photography today allows calibration of color signatures. The southern end of the valley is also a basin in which industrial haze often accumulates).

Source: NASA