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More Details for 2006-12-29

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The three residents of the International Space Station spent a busy week unpacking, inventorying and stowing more than two tons of equipment and supplies left by the space shuttle Discovery.

Monday was Christmas, a day off for the crew except for required maintenance and exercise. Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and flight engineers Mikhail Tyurin and Sunita Williams were back on their regular schedule Tuesday, waking at midnight CST and going to bed at 3:30 p.m.

Unpacking of Discovery-delivered items took up parts of nearly every day during the week. Crew members entered the new supplies and equipment in the Inventory Management System, a computerized, bar-coded tool to keep track of the voluminous material aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin passed a milestone of their stay on the station – Tuesday was their 100th day in space. Williams came to the station aboard Discovery earlier this month. She had an hour budgeted each day to familiarize herself with the station and adapt herself to life on board. These unstructured hours are scheduled during a new crew member's first two weeks aboard to get them used to the station and its activities.

Scientific activities picked up again on station. During the week crew members worked on experiments including heart function during long-duration spaceflight, a Nutritional Status Assessment, cosmic ray measurement, plant growth and changes in blood of long-duration space farers.

Crew members also did required station maintenance activities and did their daily 2½ hours of exercise, designed to mitigate some of the negative effects of lengthy space flights.