The Expedition 18 crew and the recently arrived Expedition 19 crew were busy working with various handover activities aboard the International Space Station Wednesday.
Commander Mike Fincke, Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov, and Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata of the Expedition 18 crew conducted a payload status check, inspected circuit breakers, and took biomedical samples to help measure the effects of long-term exposure of their bodies to the weightlessness of space.
Fincke and Lonchakov will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft on April 7 with spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi, who came to the station with the Expedition 19 crew on March 28.
Wakata, who arrived at the station with the STS-119 crew of space shuttle Discovery on March 17, will remain on the station as an Expedition 19 crew member.
The Expedition 19 crew, Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt, familiarized themselves with the station's exercise equipment on Wednesday.
They began their daily physical exercise routines using the station's treadmill and Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). The ARED uses vacuum cylinders to mimic weightlifting exercises in the microgravity environment of space.
The new crew also recharged the batteries in a satellite phone that a Soyuz crew would use to contact search and recovery personnel in the event of an off-target landing.
Padalka performed a an amateur radio session with school children in Montreal.
Simonyi spent time working with Earth observation and photography. The target for Wednesday was an area in southwestern Algeria that has features similar to some observed on Mars.
