Checks and Charts

STS-124: Second EVA is currently in progress - as I type, they're currently doing stuff to the outside of Kibō over Western Australia. It's the middle of the night so you can hardly see a thing onscreen from their helmet cameras, but there's lots of chat cos they're working together on this.

It's odd how so much of what they do is so mundane in its execution. For example, in the first EVA Mike Fossum had completed a stage and was talking to Houston, who said something along the lines of 'Before we proceed, can we have a glove inspection' (remember how an EVA in a previous mission was cut short because of a tear in a glove seam) and he held his hands out, palms down then turned his hands over. It made me think of being in the Brownies, our leaders were obsessed with making sure we had clean hands and we constantly had to line up to have hand inspections.

Each day I've been downloading the Execute Packages from NASA's website. They give an overview of what everyone will be doing that day, along with charts - which look like the typed charts we had at Boots to tell us what we'd be doing.

Anyhoo, gotta go now, the sun will be coming up on them soon and I want to see it again.

Quest

My final opportunity to see the ISS/Shuttle was tonight - thankfully it was clear enough for me to do so, even if it was low down and had to be viewed from an upstairs window. No more viewings while Discovery is docked, unfortunately :(

The second EVA is complete, Mike Fossum and Ron Garan came back in through the Quest airlock a little while ago, floating through like two cubist teddy bears. They're being slowly de-suited, having their gloves photographed and whatnot.

Kibō is looking rather less empty than it was a day and a bit ago - lots of equipment in place along the walls now. I know it's a very important unit of the International Space Station, but it's still a room like any other. A room that makes you coo and wow when you first go into it when it's completely empty, but then fills up quickly. I guess the upside is that it has to be kept clean to work properly, it's not going to get the accumulation of 'stuff' like most rooms have to put up with.