 Good morning, Atlantis. Your wake-up music was a special request from Emily Gibson. Dan, good morning. Thank you very much for that great wake-up music. I happen to know that's one of her favorite songs. Good morning, Katie. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be with you here. Well, thanks so much for joining us. This is really a thrill. Dr. Sager, you, of course, have been in space longer than any other American. How are you feeling these days? Physically, I feel fine. I think emotionally and psychologically I'm probably ready to go home. But overall, I'd say we all fared pretty well. We're all healthy and now it's just a question of getting back into our usual earthbound routine. I'd like to talk with you, Dr. Sager, a little bit about the emotional and psychological effects of being in space and of this entire mission. I'd like to talk a little bit about cultural isolation. You say that physiologically you're fine, but the cultural isolation was a little tough to deal with. Can you explain that to us? Well, actually I would say, and I think I can honestly say I had no serious difficulties. I worry really more about longer flights. I knew going in and I'd said this before, I can do anything for three months and that was exactly the case. On board we got along fine and we're great friends now and probably will be for the rest of our lives. Still and all, you're one American on Russian spacecraft. No one else really speaks English and there were times when I went days without talking to our folks in the Mission Control Center in Moscow, all of which adds up to a fair amount of isolation. Three months was no problem. I'm probably as crazy as I was, but no more so. Now than before I flew and it was not a big problem for me, but it's something we'll have to look at for longer flights. How is being in space with Russians? How does it compare to being in space with Americans in terms of how they do business up there? As you might expect because it's the same business and there are really not very many good ways to do it. The similarities are more striking than the differences. The fact that they were Russians didn't seem to play a large role in what I saw going on. And I'll say again, there were really no problems from a crew interrelation standpoint. All that worked probably even better than most of us expected. But the American who will be one person with two Russians and dealing with a Mission Control Center in which everyone speaks Russian will add up to a fair amount of isolation. Commander Gibson Hoot, I just like to say that name Hoot. Tell me why you think this mission was so crucial to the United States space program. Well, Katie, if we're serious about doing an international space station and building an international space station, and we are, this flight is a carbon copy of what we're going to be doing with the International Space Station. We're going to have multinational crews. We're going to fly the sort of maneuvers with space shuttle that we flew for the first time on this mission. We're going to be transferring equipment. We're going to be transferring people. In short, we're going to be doing all the sorts of things that we did on SDS-71 with International Space Station. And so this has been a real proving ground for us and it was something that we needed to do correctly and I believe we have and I hope we have. Charlie, now that the critical part of your mission is over, what will you all be doing on the way home? A little sightseeing? What kind of things will you be busy doing as you travel back to Earth? Well, Katie, we have been running pretty fast and hard for the last, I don't know, how many days has it been now? For the last days of the mission. The whole time that we've been up here and we've had very little time to look out the window, our Earth observation folks are going to be unhappy with us because we haven't shot very many pictures of the Earth just because we've been running so hard to get all the things done that we had to do and that we wanted to get done. We are going to be continuing with medical data, getting situation medical data on our test subjects which are the MIR-18 crew and getting the orbiter generally ready to come back home. We do have a little bit more breathing room in the next couple of days to get everything ready to come back. Dr. Sager, what's the first thing you're going to do when we get to that space suit and get back on Earth? Well, the first thing I'm going to try and do is stand up if I'm able to and then after that I hope my family will be there and I'd like to give my wife and my kids lots of hugs and kisses. I know you really miss them. Gentlemen, before we go, what is that sign behind you say? I love EAA. What does that mean? Oh, I heard EAA is, I love EAA. All of us, it turns out the entire crew are all members of the Experimental Aircraft Association which is an outfit out of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And before we launched, a number of us already were members and right before we launched, all of the whole entire crew became members. So that's kind of our group, I guess. Well, that's the kind of opportunity money can't buy. Gentlemen, thank you so much for talking with us this morning. This is Mission Control Houston at a mission elapsed time of seven days, 15 hours, 28 minutes into the flight of Atlantis. This live television coming from the Shuttle's Space Lab Science Workshop in the rear of Atlantis' cargo bay as the orbiter passes out over the Pacific Ocean, east of the Indonesian chain. Everything aboard Atlantis in good working order as U.S. astronaut Norm Thaggerd in the background of the space lab there begins to prepare himself for the donning. We have switched to TBC-3 at this time. Okay, copy. Thaggerd is preparing to don barrel reflex equipment. That's the neck cuff that he and his crewmates from the Mir-18 mission will wear for several hours of testing of their cardiovascular response to prolonged weightlessness. Thaggerd, Dijourof, Vladimir Dijourof, the Mir-18 commander and flight engineer Gennady Strekeloff are in their 113th day in orbit. If Atlantis lands on Friday at the Kennedy Space Center weather permitting, they will have completed a journey of 115 days aboard the Mir space station and the Shuttle Atlantis. Again, this live television from the Shuttle Space Lab module showing astronaut Bonnie Dunbar in the science workshop as she continues to collect biomedical data from the Mir-18 cosmonauts using the barrel reflex device, the neck collar which is measuring cardiovascular performance of the two cosmonauts and U.S. astronaut Norm Thaggerd who are in their 113th day in orbit. Go ahead, Charlie. Dave, we've got everything hooked up and pad down securely up through. Step 15, your go for the breakout box. Standby. Atlantis, Charlie, your go for step 16. Okay. 15 and 16. Affirmative, Charlie. 15 and 16. This is mission control Houston. Activity in the space lab science module as payload commander Ellen Baker and Mir-18 flight engineer Gennady Strekeloff help. Complete with 16 and we'll get started on KCA ops. We've got 24 pictures to send down to you in the first batch and then we'll have some more after that as well. And Ellen was thinking that if we could get some downlink time earlier in the day that would give us a head caught back up with all the stuff we wanted to send to you. Copy. We'll coordinate the times. This is mission control Houston at a mission elapsed time of seven days, 17 hours, 36 minutes into the flight of Atlantis. This picture coming live from the shuttle Atlantis' space lab module in the rear of the cargo bay. Houston back copies, Ellen. Thank you. This picture shows Dr. Ellen Baker and Mir-18 flight engineer Gennady Strekeloff collecting biomedical data on U.S. astronaut Norm Thaggerd who is in the lower body negative pressure device. Meantime on the right side of your picture astronaut Bonnie Dunbar is working with Mir-18 commander Vladimir Dujurov. This picture pretty much says it all as far as the day's work in orbit is concerned. Yes, I'll be starting on Gennady shortly on Bell and what's our TV configuration? Bonnie, we do not have live downlink at this time. Okay, thank you. The lab is a beehive of activity today. Thank you for the great camera work Norm. Here's LOS. Get you back at 23 hours and 26 minutes. You can keep downlink in KCA right until we have loss of signal and then take the PDIPT off please.