NASA Expedition 30 Crew New Year’s Message

A special New Year’s message from the NASA Expedition 30 crew members aboard the International Space Station.

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The six-person Expedition 30 crew of the International Space Station wrapped up the final workweek of 2011 today with medical experiments and upgrades to the station’s computer architecture.

Following the crew’s daily planning conference with flight control centers around the world, Commander Dan Burbank conducted a session with the VO2max experiment, which studies changes in the astronauts’ aerobic capacity during long-duration spaceflight. Meanwhile, Flight Engineer Don Pettit participated in the Integrated Cardiovascular experiment, which measures the atrophy of the heart muscle that appears to develop during long-duration spaceflight. Pettit rounded out his day with continued work with the Enhanced Processor and Integrated Communications, or EPIC, circuit card installation and testing for the station’s onboard computer architecture upgrade.

Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers worked with an experiment that studies the growth of microbial biofilm on space materials.

On the Russian side of the station, Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Anatoly Ivanishin unloaded cargo from the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft and the ISS Progress 45 supply ship. Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov conducted an audit of docking and internal transfer systems accessories and later measured the air flow between the modules in the Russian segment.

The crew members will enjoy some off-duty time over the weekend as they ring in the New Year in space. Because the station orbits the Earth every hour and a half, the crew will have ample opportunity to celebrate the arrival of 2012.