 That's a great way to start today. This is Mission Control Houston spacecraft communicator, Ken Cameron, waking the crew on board Endeavour to the tune of Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones. Today's greeting for Mission Specialist number four, Mark Garneau, on board Endeavour. This is Houston, please call Endeavour for a voice check. Endeavour, this is Adelaide. How do you hear me? Adelaide, this is Endeavour. This is Ron Cole. How many? Andrew, it's Dean Brown speaking to you again from Adelaide, and at this very moment I think you're about to pass over Adelaide itself, and certainly warm greetings to you and the rest of the crew from all of the people in South Australia. It's a pleasure to have this chance to talk with you, and so near to the end of your mission. And I ask you, how do you feel at present? I feel fine and good evening to you, Mr. Brown and people of South Australia. Yes, we are about to fly over Adelaide. It'll be night time for you, but we'll still be sunlit, and I believe if the clouds are clear enough, which I'm not sure they are today, you may be able to see us. Right now I think we're south of Perth, crossing across the Great Australian Bight towards Adelaide. I'm feeling good. We've had a wonderful mission. We've done some outstanding experiments, both in some technology and in some science, and I'm sure you've probably seen some of the pictures that we've sent down of the satellites that we've deployed and the instructor that we inflated on orbit, and they've really been breathtaking to watch all of this unfold. It's been a wonderful mission. I'm fairly enjoying it. I'm sorry it's coming to an end. Andrew, what do you see as the next major challenges in space for mankind? Obviously you've had this challenge, but over the next 20 years do you see us then moving out away from Earth and to what planets, and what do you see as some of those challenges that mankind will achieve over the next 20 year period? I think the biggest immediate challenge facing us is to learn to live and function on a day-to-day long-term basis in space, and that of course is what we will achieve with the International Space Station, and that will provide a platform from which to do that, a platform from which to perform life sciences experiments for human habitation in space, and a platform from which to do Earth observations and resource monitoring and ecological studies of the Earth, something which I think will be profoundly important. And after we've operated that facility, then I think we'll be in a position to start further colonization of the solar system. We'll begin, I think, with a return to the moon and colonization of the moon, followed some years later by a colonization trip to Mars. It's still a long way off. I certainly don't think it'll happen in my professional lifetime, although I hope to live to see it. But I think that's the direction that we're going to be going. And you're conducting all sort of experience that will be useful to Canadian. Can you give us a little bit of insight about the success of what you've done? Yes, sir, I can. One of the experiments that I spent a lot of time on during this mission has been the commercial float zone furnace, and that's a furnace that melt materials and then re-solidifies them, and these materials are semiconductor materials. And semiconductor materials are the materials that we use to make integrated circuits and chips that we use in our computers and in a lot of our electronic equipment. And we're trying to make a better quality of crystal. And there are two Canadian scientific organizations that are flying crystals on our mission. One is called CANMET from Ottawa, and the other is the University of Dalhousie in Halifax. And we've had some very good results with the float zone furnace. Another experiment that is Canadian on board is the Aquatic Research Facility. And this is an experiment to study the effect of weightlessness on sea light forms. We're carrying sea urchins, starfish, and blue clams. And we're looking at their embryonic development up here in space. And those are experiments with scientists coming from the University of British Columbia and also once again from Dalhousie University. We also have two other experiments in the cargo bay, which are thin, organic films and another one, semiconductor materials, the vapor diffusion experiment. And they come from the University of Toronto and the University of Moncton. So Canada is well represented up here in space research. Mark, the Houston Chronicle. Dr. Lucid, can you characterize your spirits at this point? How are you doing near the midway point? And could you also touch on your working and personal relations with your Russian hosts? How is that going? Questions at the same time, because from my viewpoint, I think everything is going along just really great. I mean, I couldn't ask for anything more out of a flight than what I've gotten out of this flight so far. And if the second half is as good as the first half, then all I can say is you just can't beat it. Right now, I'm feeling really good and I'm busy. As you might know, we've activated Prota and I've gotten busy doing a lot of the non-state experiments in that. And of course, there's a lot of activity on board right now because Yuri and Yuri have been doing several EVAs and they're going to be doing another EVA this weekend, and so that keeps us all busy involved in that. And it's just been a lot of fun working with Yuri and Yuri. And I think that they have helped me out tremendously, and I hope that maybe I'll help them out a little bit. And all along, I've always said that it doesn't make any difference what kind of complicated science experiments or complicated satellites or what have you that you might do on your flight. What makes a flight memorable, what makes it something that you'll always remember is the people that you work with. And if you have really good people that you're working with, then it's a great flight. It doesn't make any difference what the actual work is that you're doing. And I just have absolutely wonderful people and Yuri and Yuri to work with, and it's just been going really fine. And I have a final question. What have you found so far that you would consider most insightful about life aboard a space station, the sort of thing that you might like to pass along to future colleagues who'll be involved in the assembly and operation of the space station? Just from an operator's point of view, from a person that's actually working here on the space station, the thing that has sort of taken up more time than I think is really warranted is trying to find things. You know, you put things somewhere and then forget where they are or things have been put somewhere and you don't know where they are. And it just takes a lot of time just to get everything together that you need to do whatever activity you're going to do. And I think that some way of keeping track of just where things are, I think is a very, very important activity. Hey, Shannon, this is Phil Chen, Earth News. I heard you talking to your family and friends a couple of days ago, telling them how exciting the EVA looked from your point of view. How different is it aboard me or where EVAs are just a regular normal, not day-to-day, but week-to-week occurrence as opposed to on a shuttle flight where they're pretty rare? It was a normal, everyday thing for Yuri and Yuri to go out and do an EVA. I mean, it was pretty exciting. I've never had the privilege of watching an EVA from the shuttle viewpoint. Now, I saw Linda and Rich do their EVA on 76, but I was on the mirror side. I was on the mirror side of the hatch and I saw that. The thing that struck me when Yuri and Yuri went out and did their EVA was just how big the station is. You know, they're out a long way. And I'll admit that the first time that I saw Yuri out on that long pole that the Russians used to take equipment and people from one module over to the other, the first time I saw Yuri way out on that pole and going out just to cause nothing to get to the other module, my heart went up in my throat just a minute. My heart, I sure hope the other Yuri knows what he's doing as he's rotating the pole around. This is Irene Brown with UPI for Dr. Lucid. After two months in space, what issues do you feel need to be addressed for longer duration flights such as those lasting six months or longer? I had a whole lot of time to think about that. The things that have made this flight very enjoyable for me have been the fact that I've had some regular contact with my family and that's, for me, that's very, very important. I've been able to talk to them on the radio, I've been able to talk to them by TV, to two-way video contact, and also I've been able to get letters or messages from them by an email connection. And that to me is extremely, extremely important. Come on, we'll be here. Here's one person. Okay, come on in. Okay, well now you can see us, but we can't see you. We say that there's a lot of equipment there and from various countries, could you describe some of it for us? Well, Yuri Vladimirovich will do the honors here, and I'll be showing. Okay, over here. This is the glove box, which is being used by Shannon mostly, because we're preparing for EVAs. This is a very interesting chamber with these black gloves in which one can work, little shades, so you can see what's going on in the chamber. What do we do inside? We perform experiments here for microgravity isolating platform for various weightless experiments, and over here we have a very interesting furnace. It's a four hour timer. We have an experiment for processing of some specimens, honestly speaking, I don't know which ones. We have very good visibility when the results are in. Then Shannon performed an experiment, which is a little bit further down, unfortunately. We have specifically gotten rid of a lot of equipment here so that we could pass through here, so it's a little bit further down there in a box. Maybe Shannon will explain a little bit more detail about the experiment. Very good results. You just have to believe us on that. I'm talking in general. Shannon doesn't want to be talking anything specific so as not to tire you. We just wanted to talk with you. That was the picture from here. Great.