 Can we get an early start on putting in the next cartridge? Stand by one, Susan. We'll check for you. Space Lab, Ralphie. Hey, Goree. Luca, how's that KU coverage looking off? Would you like me to try and start that verification on the rip? I have to try my day very quick. You can proceed. On the HGHF, the furnace has start moving. And Space Lab Huntsville for AGHF. It'll probably take about 10 or 15 minutes for the furnace to complete its translation, but you have a go to proceed with that cartridge exchange as soon as it's finished moving. For the furnace zero to two, we have a go to proceed to exert the next cartridge. That's affirmative. For Columbia, we're about 145 miles above the Earth. We just crossed over the United States and we're out over the Atlantic now. Well, you do that about every 90 minutes or so. What's it like circling the Earth that high and that often over a period of 16 days? Oh, it's been fantastic so far. The first passes we see in the morning are a gorgeous panoramic view of the Mediterranean area. We have two alternate paleo-spatialites that trained with us in there from Spain and Italy, so we see their home countries every morning just after we arise. Too bad they can't pass up some food as you go over, I'll bet. Now, this is the longest mission that NASA has attempted with the space shuttle. 16 days, you can stay an extra two if you need two for contingencies there and weather ops. And I understand one of the primary missions is to study microgravity and weightlessness in space. Now, we've been in space for 30 years and we've had long duration missions in the Skylab and certainly now with a mirror with American astronauts up with the Russians. Why is it important to know what happens to the human body and weightless conditions? That's a great question, Gene. We've had a lot of experience both in the American program and with the Soviet program. We have on this flight, however, began some real baseline collection, particularly in the Muscle and Bone Physiology area, probably the most extensive collection of sampling from muscle and bone tissue that's been done to date. And we have a chance for a long duration mission to accumulate that. We've used a lot of the great data that's accumulated from prior missions to formulated experiments that we're trying to do on this one specifically. This panel of crews is getting BOPS, these are their muscle tissues, pre and post-mission. And this tissue is going to be examined by investigators around the world and this is very valuable. Sampling has not been done before. And we're getting really extensive studies of the calcium system and we really hope that some of this data also interlates and correlates with diseases like osteoporosis back here on Earth. So it has both a purpose for a long duration future space missions and also for perhaps cures for diseases here today. Is that correct? Gene, we really got some great investigators both in the U.S. and around the world looking at these samples and certainly the diseases of all osteoporosis and many of the muscle diseases correlate highly with many of the things we find happen to astronauts in microgravity. And we're very hopeful that some of these spinoffs from some of this research will be helpful in those areas. Okay, let me ask Susan Helms real quickly. What is it like just to live in the shuttle over a period of time? Well actually the best correlation I can make is with a camping trip where you're well prepared. We basically have a fixed amount of volume inside the space shuttle and inside here we've got living quarters, working quarters, habitability quarters and it's home for as long as two weeks or even longer hopefully on this flight. And we definitely get to be a team. We work together as a team for over a year and become a family as that progresses and when we get up here we've got a job to do and we work back in the module primarily during the day on this flight and then when, or I should say during the work shift on this flight and then when it comes time for the crew to go to sleep we turn the front end into a sleeping quarters and it's very much like a camping trip. We're sort of in a Volkswagen bus here locked up with the door closed for over two weeks and it definitely takes a lot of choreography and a lot of practice but it's working extremely well. Let me ask very quickly Charles Brady about carrying the Olympic torch when he was doing his exercises the other day. I didn't expect that. My crewmates handed it off to me. It really was a great honor or something that we all take great honor and pride in the fact that Columbia has been able to carry the Olympic torch with us and also the Olympic banner that we hope to unfold here on our day off and we all feel tremendous honor and respect for the Olympic, the international spirit. We have an international crew from many different countries Spain, Italy, Canada, France, the U.S. is represented along with the respective space agency so we feel like this is a play as a real representation of the Olympic spirit and it was quite an honor to be exercising with that. Well thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it. Taking your time out to board your busy schedule and talking to it. It's a pleasure talking to you from aboard the space shuttle Columbia as we orbit the Earth. With the life and microgravity space lab mission we're going to make a very aggressive and coordinated effort to try to understand the extent of muscle atrophy and also the mechanisms behind it. And for that reason we brought together six different teams from the United States and Europe to study this in a comprehensive fashion. The Muscle Physiology experiment, we're making use of a very sophisticated device called a Torque Velocity Dynamometer or a TBD. It's contributed to the mission by the European Space Agency. I sort of think of the Torque Velocity Dynamometer as an arm wrestling or a leg wrestling machine. This morning as Jean-Jacques Fabier, my colleague, is working out here he's using it in the leg wrestling mode. Sometimes the machine wins the wrestling match against us and sometimes it lets us win. But who wins the wrestling match is not important. What is important is that the TBD can measure the torque or the force applied by the limb and also the speed at which we contract our muscles and the position of the foot or the arm at any instant in time. And with this information the scientist on the ground can understand how muscle performance is adapting to weightlessness. For example, they can look at the results coming out of this machine here and understand what's happening at the level of muscle fibers. There are two types of muscle fibers in our body. We have fast twitch fibers and we have slow twitch fibers. Fast twitch fibers contract muscles very quickly but they fatigue quite readily. Slow twitch fibers, on the other hand, contract more slowly but they have a lot more endurance. The LMS scientists theorize that during our 17 days here in space that our slow muscle fibers are going to take on properties of fast muscle fibers. That means that they'll be able to contract quicker but they'll be more fatigable. But the muscle wasting and the loss of strength is not totally explained by the fact that changes occur at the level of muscle fibers. There must be other changes going on as well and therefore we have some investigators who are looking at changes at the hormonal level and the neurological level as well. For instance, we have one particular group from UCLA who are looking at the level of neurological activation required to energize the muscles in our legs. Because of all the electrodes that we wear on our body and because of all the blood samples and muscle biopsies that are taken from us and because of the fact that we spend a lot of time inside the TVD every day we light heartedly referred to ourselves as the RAP crew as in laboratory RAPs. However, we and the scientists on the ground fully expect that the results coming out of the muscle physiology set of experiments will go a long way to helping us understand the adaptation of muscles to weightlessness. And in the future we're going to be able to provide counter measures for astronauts flying on the International Space Station and on exploratory missions to the inner solar system. And we also expect that some of the results coming out from the muscle physiology work will have application to rehabilitation programs on Earth for spinal cord injured patients and also for patients who suffer from muscle unloading illnesses. Well, that's about it for the muscle physiology experiment. I hope you now have an understanding of what we're doing when you see us in downlink images in the torque velocity dynamometer. Go along from the Space Shuttle Columbia. Talk to you tomorrow. This television being seen from the Space Lab Science Module showing a payload specialist Jean-Jacques Favier who is working along with pilot Kevin Kriegel and payload commander Susan Helms on an in-flight maintenance procedure which should take about an hour and a half to complete and bring back to full operation one of the key experiments in the Space Lab that is the bubble drop facility. A power cable has experienced a short circuit on board and as was mentioned during the mission update program it is being restored to full health through this in-flight maintenance procedure.