 And we can see here in the foreground one of the plant growth chambers and floating above it from our perspective is payload commander Susan Helms documenting the plants via still photos. This particular container holds four of 20 seedlings, some of fir and some of the loblolly pine. Two of each four in each of these containers are bent. The other two are the controls in the experiment are left unbent. Samples of both the bent and the unbent pines will be cut on this flight day and another flight day. After having been bent on flight day three, those samples will be preserved and returned to earth for further study. We can see now members of Columbia's payload crew now preparing to take a cutting from these seedlings. From this vantage point, we can clearly see that two of these seedlings are in bent positions. This was performed on flight day three and the control samples within this plant growth container are unbent. In this procedure, one payload crew member makes a rough cut of the seedling while the other payload crew member stands ready with the vacuum to remove any potentially hazardous debris from the weightless environment inside the space lab module. We can now see payload specialist Jean-Jacques Favier floating near the front of the space lab module in front of the workbench where he is stowing equipment used to take cuttings from fir seedlings as part of the plant growth facility experiment. We can now see payload specialist Jean-Jacques Favier working within the plant growth facility glove bag. He has isolated a fixation bag and is now removing one of the first seedling samples harvested a few moments ago. The purpose of the glove bag is to provide an additional level of safety in containing the chemical fixative used to preserve the sample. We can see him now installing the sample into the fixative bag. He will then reinstall this clip to seal the opening of the bag through which the sample was installed. The chemical fixative is contained within the lower portion of the bag between the other two clips. This is Michelle Coyden with the Associated Press. Have you noticed increasing fatigue and short-term memory loss as the mission goes on? And could this be a major problem on flights this long? Sales were right on target and I don't think we've had excessive fatigue or any memory loss. We in fact seem to be working better both individually and together as a unit. This is Mark Corough of the Houston Chronicle and my question is for either Tom Hendricks or Susan. Could you just give us a sense your sense of the success of your endeavor to this to this point? Do you feel like you're accomplishing the mission goals? Work in a nutshell, we had a very very demanding mission that from the very beginning was going to be challenging just simply because it was so unique and had so many different aspects between the microgravity as well as the life science and we have just been thrilled to be able to accomplish all that we were able to accomplish. To tell you the truth coming into this mission I don't think I was sure it could be done and these guys have been outstanding in the sense that they've been able to get right to it and and do things. We've had a few glitches but they got fixed thanks to the great support we had from the ground and you can't ask for more than that. It's been great. That concludes our question so from JSC Columbia please stand by for KSC PAO. Columbia this is Kennedy PAO how do you hear me? I'm going to read you a lot in clear and we're ready for the questions. This is Irene Brown with UPI for Tom Hendricks. I don't know what you know of the Saudi bombing that happened last week and I was wondering if you there's a memorial service this afternoon for five of the crew members who are from a unit that also supports NASA's shuttle launches. I was wondering if you knew any of these people from previous shuttle missions or training and if you had any thoughts on the incidents from your perspective in space? Several times during the mission and we regret that there were any loss of life and especially loss of military members that some of us may have known. We were notified by message but we have not seen a list of the casualties. Our sympathies go out to those that the lost loved ones and our prayers go out to those that are still in the recovery and from space so we do not see the conflicts that humans are going under on the earth. We just see a beautiful earth and we wish that we could share that perspective and help bring peace through the perspective from space. This is Stephen Young with Reuters for Susan Helms. I was wondering how you're feeling this far into the mission which is longer than than many shuttle flights previously and you seem to be quite keen to go longer than 17 days. How much longer do you think you could continue on board? Looks like we're at the 11 day point today and I'm feeling great. I'm feeling better than I ever thought. Absolutely no problems with any of my physiological pain because I've been getting exercise and eating well and sleeping well and done that in the past but there's no change for this mission so things are going extremely well. As far as how long we could go on this flight unfortunately we don't have the consumables to get beyond a certain point and that's probably about flight day 19 or 20 and if that's what they want to get to us we would take it but I suspect we're probably going to land on Sunday and the next time around maybe my next flight will be even longer than this one and that would be great. Robin Soriano with Florida today for Susan, Kevin or Tom. You've had the chance on this flight to use video teleconferencing to fix things and to talk with family. I wonder how that has made a difference as compared to previous missions. It's really been outstanding. We showed it when we fixed the bubble drop experiment. It was a lot easier to talk to people with a two-way communication. They could show us diagrams. They could point exactly the item that we needed to fix as opposed to sending up a message and then trying to interpret the message. It also has been a morale booster because we've been able to talk to our families with the new video teleconference so I think it's a great step in the future and I think they'll probably have it on the International Space Station. Bill Harwood for CBS News. For anyone really Commander Henrich you talked to the group in Houston that's in the life support chamber that they're testing regenerative life support systems the other day and I'm curious from your perspective on a 17-day mission and thinking about Shannon Lucid on Mir, how does it shake out in terms of the psychological pressures on living with a large group of people in a small area versus the medical sorts of things you guys are studying. What's kind of the balance there for long-term spaceflight? We can only speak from this experience and from this experience it's been absolutely fantastic working as a team together. In fact what you're seeing here is just a small part of the team. The entire team includes all the people in Houston at Huntsville, Alabama and at the primary investigator sites around the world and we're just a visible part of that team. Four of us are the subjects for the majority of the experiments and we don't feel that we're in an enclosed environment through the communications that we have. We feel like we're just a member of the team and although it maybe appears to be a small confined environment to us it seems very roomy. We can wander between the space lab and the flight deck, look out the window, come back and do some work and we don't have a problem at all with 17 days and with this sort of communication capabilities and the roominess that we have with the laboratory or the future space station I don't see a problem with the long-term flights and of course Shannon Lucid can give us a better perspective from Mir. This is Phil Chen, Earth news from Rick Linahan. What's it like as a veterinarian handling these large two-legged mammals instead of your normal animals that you would handle? I used to joke about that. We are the experiment on this flight and over the excess of two weeks of the flight we'll be studying muscle bone, calcium metabolism, different physiology that pertains to how human might live long-term in space and as Commander Hedricks has talked about this is sort of a prelude. A lot of the studies that we're doing here are actually being done on a long term with this many people in a group for the first time and we'll use all this data on the space station and figure out better ways to keep people in space, keep them healthier, stop the muscle and bone degeneration and as spin off of that we're also able to use this data hopefully to look at the disease processes which occur in our elderly population on the ground and hopefully down the line use this as a way to control that also. Tell me for any young people who are aspiring to be just like you who are home here in North Carolina any advice you want to give to an aspiring new astronaut sir? We had a chance to talk with many school kids all the crew members here participating with Sarex Amateur Radio and so we talked with the schools around the world and listening to my crew mates and myself I think we all agree that to work hard to dream those dreams and to not give up on dreams and to take good care of oneself and working as you as a tool in helping each other out those are the keys not only to becoming an astronaut but to life also.