 After a week of hunting down satellites and walking in space, Endeavour's astronauts get a day to relax. Heading down the home stretch, the crew turns to preparations for bringing its ship into port. We've got the story of Flight Day 8 aboard Endeavour next on today's edition of Mission Update. Welcome to Mission Update. The astronauts of Endeavour are near the end of their seventh full work day and have begun to get their spacecraft ready to end its tenth trip to Earth orbit. After four scheduled hours of off-duty time and with the primary objectives of the mission completed, the six crew members turned their attention to a number of secondary experiments and to packing up some of their equipment for the trip home Saturday morning. The orbiter systems are reported to be operating in fine fashion. Flight controllers have not been able to determine the cause of an ice buildup in the topper unit of the flash evaporator system, which assists the payload bay door radiators in dissipating heat generated by the shuttle's systems. But mission operations representative Jeff Bantle says the FESS is working fine now. We are looking at doing a longer FESS dump than the test that we tried yesterday. We've been using the FESS off and on during the day-to-day in the primary v-controller. It's worked great, haven't been any problems. If our water quantity is allowed, we'll probably do a little bit longer kind of a FESS dump tomorrow. Bantle says that will provide more data on the FESS operations to assist the engineers who will be checking the system after the orbiter returns to Earth. Right now, Endeavour is in the 115th orbit of the mission, flying some 190 miles over the Pacific Ocean. At a speed of 17,500 miles an hour, the shuttle orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. On board Endeavour, all six astronauts are nearing the end of their pre-sleep period and their schedule to turn in for the night in just a couple of minutes. After almost a week's worth of satellite retrieval and walking in space, the astronauts took it easy today, seeing two secondary payloads and taking some time off to relax and enjoy themselves. An up-tempo start to Endeavour's eighth day in space last night as mission control roused the astronauts for what would be a quiet day in orbit. With all their mission objectives having been successfully completed, the astronauts were given the day to relax, enjoy the view of the planet and capture images of the Earth from their vantage point 192 miles in space. As Endeavour passed over the Gulf Coast of Florida early this morning, flight controllers and pilot Brent Jett discussed weather conditions back on Earth, in particular a massive weather system heading toward the southeast and Endeavour's landing site. Now Brent, we have the weather radar and the visible satellite picture up on our screens right now and there is a front coming by. We're clear now but we expect some squall weather towards morning here. Glad you got a good look. Yeah Tom, we just passed right overhead and we could see that stuff out to the north and west. We're just concerned that it goes through Florida by the time you guys are ready to come home. The forecast for the Kennedy Space Center calls for good conditions for Endeavour's scheduled landing early Saturday. Three of Endeavour's crew members, Commander Brian Duffy, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and mission specialist Winston Scott gathered on the shuttle's flight deck this morning to answer questions about their mission from South African students at a television studio in Johannesburg. Scott, who spent seven hours spacewalking in Endeavour's cargo bay yesterday, said a vital test of his space suit's ability to insulate him from bitterly cold temperatures proved to be successful. The most important part I think was the 35 minutes that I used to stand still in the most cold environment that we could achieve. And I activated the thermal, the heating units on my suit to see whether or not they would keep me warm and I'm happy to report that they worked very, very well. I never once felt uncomfortable out there in the cold of space. Wakata, who retrieved two satellites during the mission, including his country's space flyer unit, said the mission represented another success in the arena of international cooperation. We showed a perfect teamwork during this retrieval together with the crew members here. And this is one of the very good examples of international cooperation. And I think international cooperation is the most important thing to proceed on to further frontier in space. Endeavour continued to circle the Earth every 90 minutes as the astronauts began to gear up for the final hours of their flight and an end to the first shuttle mission of the year. Now, here's a look at what's coming up in the next day on orbit and our schedule for NASA television coverage. In just a few minutes, the six astronauts on board Endeavour end their eighth day on orbit and start an eight-hour sleep period. At 10 central time, we'll hold our daily mission status briefing from here at the Johnson Space Center. Immediately afterward, we'll go to the Goddard Space Flight Center for science briefings on the shuttle laser altimeter and the getaway specials. The Flight Day video file containing highlights of this day on orbit comes up on NASA television at 11.30. The astronauts start their final full work day in space at 5.11 this afternoon with preparations for Saturday's pre-dawn landing. About a quarter to nine tonight, Commander Brian Duffy and Pilot Brent Jett start the pre-landing checkout of Endeavour's flight control systems. About an hour later, they will hot-fire the reaction control system jets to ensure controllability of the orbiter as it re-enters the atmosphere. At 11.41 central time tonight, the crew holds its in-flight news conference. The first 20 minutes of tonight's event will be for U.S. reporters and the final 10 minutes will be in Japanese for Japanese reporters. A bit after one o'clock tomorrow morning, Duffy will take a turn at the Portable In-flight Landing Operations Trainer, a computer flight simulator used by commanders and pilots on orbit to hone their flying skills. Other crew members will be busy packing up the crew cabin overnight and mission specialist Koichi Wakata will stow the KU band communications antenna at 3.11 tomorrow morning. All of the activity on board Endeavour is being guided from the Mission Control Center here in Houston where Flight Director Rob Kelso and his orbit 2 team are on duty. Flight Director John Shannon's planning shift comes on console later this morning. A reminder immediately after our 10 o'clock mission status briefing, NASA TV will bring you special science briefings on the shuttle laser altimeter and the getaway specials. And then our Flight Day video file will air at 11.30. We'll be back at 9 central time tomorrow morning with the next edition of Mission Update.