Sushi For Breakfast

Due to bad weather at KSC, Endeavour will land today at Edwards Air Force Base in California, under a bright clear blue sky. And Greg Chamitoff will be home after six months of living in space! How cool. Throughout the mission I have had my STS-126 mission patch on show:



I have also typed up all of my 3rd assignment for my course, I'll print it out at work and look over it on Tuesday. I got my mark for the 2nd assignment today - 58% - but I haven't looked at the feedback cos it won't download without freezing my browser. Still not decided yet what I'll do tomorrow, only that I won't be getting up at my usual early-for-work time. I will go out at some point, possibly into town, but will tack on my food shopping while I'm out. I also plan to take my camera with me so tomorrow's Project365 pic should be a bit more exciting.

They're doing a waste water dump right now on the shuttle. A routine thing, water is a byproduct of... something that happens a lot. I wish they'd screen it, maybe they're out of range right now. I've seen it before, it looks like the orbiter is pissing into the night. Always makes me smile.

I've been watching a few bits & pieces of STS-126, with us back on GMT there's less to see as I can't stay up too late because of work in the morning. The launch & ascent was excellent, although I think that was the final shuttle night launch :'( but there's more to see on the onboard cameras during daylight launches. Endeavour is now docked to the ISS, I was waiting up for them last night to open the hatch, which they eventually did although it felt like they were taking forever.

I'm not as familiar with this crew as I was with the last mission's crew. Trying to work out who's on CAPCOM duties - Alan Poindexter did launch & ascent, Shannon Lucid is waking the shuttle crew up in the morning again. Steve Robinson was on duty yesterday, the NASA TV commentator made a comment at the end of his shift that he has to go to band practice (astronauts have a band, Max Q, a bit like Band From TV only made up of astronauts). Earlier today there was a woman on CAPCOM with a high-pitched squeaky voice, and I'm still trying to figure out who she is.

Seen bits & pieces of the live coverage, including the spiders! (little ones) but without knowing who everyone is it's sometimes just a load of bottoms and socked feet floating past. Pre-docking, NASA TV was showing footage from the ISS, Michael Fincke was talking to Mission Control and having a good scratch of his arse, until they said "oh, you're on TV right now" and he immediately stopped. He was also chewing gum, I saw him take it out of his mouth, inspect it & then put it back in his mouth (or he could have false teeth & have been inspecting them).

First EVA tomorrow, EVAs on this mission appear to be the domain of Mission Specialist Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, who is otherwise a Navy Salvage Diver. Should be more exciting with some awesome shots of the Earth.

STS-126 will deliver a new water regeneration system which will allow urine to be recycled into drinking water.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7729085.stm

It's a cool idea, it made me laugh cos they had one of these (or several of these) years ago on Red Dwarf. Given that Red Dwarf is set some time in the future, does this make it old or new technology?

I signed up to a three-day pass to the Guardian & Observer archives - £15. So far lots of the same about Ran Laurie, words like "brilliant" and "perfect" used frequently. Hope to have something more to share next week. And I should finally have my mission patches by then! Had a customs charge to pay, which I did today, so they should be with me in plenty of time for the next shuttle mission.

And I have a Halloween theme on Firefox! And it's not too strange, it's actually rather good. I have the ColourfulTabs plugin and it looks good with dark-coloured tabs.