Mission Update

The early hours are starting to get to me, less because of the earliness itself and more because it’s just hard to go to bed at 8:30 p.m. and thus be prepared for the 4:30 a.m. alarm. Thankfully, I get to take tomorrow and Sunday off. This is the 11th day in a row that I’ve worked (my last day off was Memorial Day) so I’m looking forward to my weekend. I’ll still be getting up early, since on Monday our on-console time is 4:00 a.m. Here I am looking a little more awake, since this was taken last Monday in the middle of the rendezvous. This is the first time I’ve actually gotten a photo of me on console working, since the photographers never come into our back room during the launch shift (too many people).

If you want to know I’m doing, well, I’m watching my displays. I’m also trying to ignore the fact that there is a camera in my face, and I’d really like to talk photography. But we’re in the middle of a rendezvous here, people! 🙂
NASA TV is currently showing replays of the video taken from the solid rocket boosters on launch. It’s pretty cool — watching the liftoff and first couple minutes of ascent, followed by a gorgeous view of the shuttle leaving the booster behind as it begins to fall back to earth.

Today the crew is working on installing more equipment inside the new Japanese module. Here’s video from Wednesday, when they opened the module for the first time and the astronauts got to bounce off the walls for a while. Now that they are installing lockers and other equipment on each side (“floor” and “ceiling” too), it doesn’t like quite as spacious. Still big though.