Expedition 38 Sends New Year's Greetings on Off-Duty Day

On the last day of 2013, the six station residents had off-duty time on orbit while still conducting some science, maintenance work and exercise. The Expedition 38 crew also sent down messages in their native languages to bring in the New Year. The international crew of six will also have New Year's Day off.

Commander Oleg Kotov and his fellow cosmonauts Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mikhail Tyurin gathered in the Japanese Kibo laboratory to downlink a New Year's greeting to their Russian colleagues.

The event was conducted live with Russian space organizations including the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Institute of Bio-Medical Problems and RSC (Rocket and Space Corporation) Energia.

While astronauts Rick Mastracchio, Mike Hopkins and Koichi Wakata enjoyed an off-duty day New Year's Eve, microgravity research continued to benefit life on Earth and in space.

The station's systems are continuing to operate normally following spacewalk repairs to its external cooling system, and Mission Control teams around the world will ring in the New Year monitoring their performance. Wakata also radioed a new year's greeting to his colleagues at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Wakata assisted Mastracchio during a periodic fitness evaluation as part of the human research program on the International Space Station. Wakata monitored Mastracchio's blood pressure as he was working out on an exercise cycle, also known as the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System, or CEVIS.

Hopkins worked maintenance on combustion research hardware in the Destiny lab during the afternoon. He replaced a multi-drop combustion apparatus fuel reservoir inside the Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR). Afterward, he also replaced a manifold bottle inside the CIR.

Tyurin conducted photography for the Uragan (Hurricane) experiment that observes natural and man-made changes to the Earth's geography. Ryazanskiy ran laptop computer anti-virus scans and Kotov updated the station's inventory management system.