Repairing leak. Credits: NASA

Update from Volare mission control in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany:

This weekend was very busy at Columbus Control Centre. A spacewalk lasting over five hours was conducted on Saturday and at the same time we were preparing to get the last activities finished before the next Soyuz returns tonight.

The three astronauts on the Soyuz, Chris Hadfield, Roman Romaneko and Tom Marshburn need to carry a few items back to Earth with them, including some standard SD memory cards, the same that are used in consumer cameras for example. These cards contain valuable scientific data and we need to make sure that all data is recorded on them before the astronauts pack for return on their spacecraft.

Today we had our regular mission management team meeting, which we hold every Monday.We discussed the first two experiments that Luca is going to perform. One experiment is called Space Headaches. The Space Headaches investigation requires that astronauts fill in questionnaires to evaluate how often astronauts in space get headaches and what they are like.

Columbus module

A few days after Luca arrives on the International Space Station we will have our first video conference with him, which we will then conduct every week. We do not always talk about work during these conferences but sometimes talk about normal things that happen down here on Earth or things that astronauts like to share with us. Because some of us at Col-CC speak Italian, we sometimes talk in Italian to Luca, which all of us enjoy.  For these video conferences Luca will be in the Columbus module.

The integration of Luca’s Soyuz capsule with the launcher rocket is planned for 25 May.

…15 days let to launch, and counting….