Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Final scheduled amateur radio events completed

Richard has now completed all of his scheduled amateur radio events and most of his other planned experiments. He should have much more free time Tuesday (GMT) afternoon and Wednesday morning so it is possible that he could choose to do more voice contacts during those periods.
The crew is scheduled for 4 hours of nap time from 1300-1700 GMT on Wednesday to begin the sleep shift necessary for them to begin preparations of their Soyuz vehicle. A request to have the SSTV system active during the Tuesday night sleep period and during the nap has been submitted. Hopefully, that will permit persons in other parts of the world the opportunity to capture some SSTV images (though many will be at night).
The ISS crew will be awake until midnight GMT on Wednesday and then awake at noon GMT on Thursday to begin a long day of preparations for their return trip home. One of those preparations will be to shutdown the ham radio system about 1430 GMT. The hatch between the Soyuz and ISS is planned to be closed at 2105 GMT Thursday, undocking at 0012 GMT on Friday and landing in Kazakhstan at 0336 GMT on Friday.