 against to the different colors. Well, Velcro, as you know, is a friend of astronauts. It's very easy to lose things up in space. We're on a camping trip, but since there's no gravity, things tend to float away. And of course, we use Velcro to help keep things in place. The blue Velcro, all of the vehicles in standard locations, and they leave it on the orbiter from flight to flight. The yellow Velcro that we can put in locations that make things easier for us for our particular mission. Some crews put more yellow Velcro around the vehicle, and then multiple crews like those locations. And so lately, I've noticed that the folks who process the vehicles have been leaving some of the yellow Velcro on because it's useful to multiple crews. Eventually, if it stays in one place long enough, then they change it to blue, and it becomes a standard location. The other interesting thing to note is that on the structure of the vehicle in the cabin, we always put the pile part of the Velcro. And then all of the objects, the movable objects that we move from place to place, like cameras and pens and pencils and pockets, we put the pile side of the Velcro so that everything is standard. We'll be using APU number one. Now receiving live television at the flight deck. Crew again preparing for the checkout of the flight control system. That's the rudder, speed break, and elevons that are used to steer the vehicle once it re-enters the atmosphere and begins to operate like an airplane. For this particular checkout, one of the three APUs will be activated. This will be APU or auxiliary power unit number one. Live television now coming down from Atlantis and the flight deck in this image. Commanders Jim Weatherby and pilot Mike Bloomfield in their seats and directly behind them, mission specialist Scott Perzinski, the flight engineer on the STS-86 mission. Houston and I had to re-select the contacts there, but we didn't want to do it. OK. We can do it on the next flight. This is Mission Control Houston, the images on NASA television showing the three up-pulse fireings. The thing you learned on your stay on near and how can it be applied to the International Space Station? Are you scheduled for any of the ISS missions as of yet? This is Michael Fall, the NASA five-ational on-mere. And I can say that the most, I can't think of any one thing that was most valuable for me on there, except maybe that when things get hard, they get easier a little bit later. And it's best to let anything affect you too much. It'll help also, I think. As for future missions, I'm looking forward very much to being on Earth for a while with my young family. And I do not expect to be on the International Space Station for quite a few years yet. Age 11 in Evanston, Illinois, that you would tell the people planning the new International Space Station. Well, that's a very good question, Will. And I have actually learned a lot of small, if I consider, details as to how you might carry out more effectively experiments and how to live in space. And some of those things we are not yet doing at NASA. And I will have my shot at telling all our experts on the ground what I've learned. A good example that is quite different from Space Shuttle is that the Russians on their space station use rubber bungees tied to the walls everywhere to hold things in place. Whereas I think you know that we use Velcro here on the Space Shuttle. I believe that the combination of Velcro on the equipment and bungees in general on the walls is a very good way for us to keep control of all the different things and pieces that we have to work with when we're in space. And I think that's the most important thing I'm going to tell anybody about the International Space Station. This is phase three. How do you hear me? That is indeed, Jim. Good afternoon. We're doing. It's a big question we all have longer than we've been up here. Jim, we're all doing great. We're on day 15 out of day 90. But we want to send you some congratulations your way on an outstanding mission so far. We've been watching you on the ground here throughout your mission and throughout ours down here. Yes, indeed. Jim, I have to ask one question. Having been involved in training you folks in water transfer, I should ask how that went. I've got enough to drink for the next few months. There's a few folks here that I'd like to say hello to you. So let me pass you on to Vicki, if I may. Seeing all the content that I'm just afraid I'm taking away. Well, I'm glad. We've never had such a good look at you all of it. Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And since I do have connections down at the Cape, I was wondering if there's anything special that Mike would like to have waiting for him when he gets back. Oh, Vicki, that's a very kind thought. Thanks very much. But my kind of dreams were way ahead of you. And I can kind of set this up. And I'm hoping that they'll have some lasagna and pizza there for me, different days, as well as a lot of chocolate and beer. Well, I'll be sure they get that message. And now I'll pass you on to Laura. Yes, as part of this test, we are doing the exercise countermeasure protocol that we use on station. And I was just wondering if Michael Ful could comment on some of the exercise protocols they did on Mir. I was going to ask you the same question, actually, for what you're doing. We spend basically two exercise periods a day. Some crew members do not carry this out, by the way. I should say that. But per plan, you do two per day. And it's time-lined for an hour. But it takes about an hour and a half to two hours for each one of them. And basically, you do one session on a treadmill running. And the other is on an odometer. And the odometer is split between cycling with your legs and moving the odometer with your hands. As well as that, something which probably you guys don't need on Earth, but you would do on a space flight, are the what we call the expanders. It's a Russian word for these big bungees. And they're very well designed with nice trimmings and things so that you can work out different muscles of your body just by being anchored to the treadmill in your harness and then stretching your arms and legs in different directions and standing up and doing squats. And that system, I think, is very well worked out by the Russians and they've had pretty, I would say great success with it overall in their program. And I did not deviate from their protocol at all. And I would recommend just to relieve some of the boredom anyway, doing a pretty serious exercise program. And twice a day is just fine. Where you listen to music, you enjoy each other's music and try not to get in the way of your meal times. John Lewis, I got a question about the differing schedules that you have. You know, the shuttle base is more of a timeline type schedule. When you get in the longer durations, we've noticed in here through our 30 day or 60 days and now into our 90 day that it's kind of hard, a timeline, and it's almost easier to set the schedules yourself on board the vehicle. And I was just wondering how y'all noticed that relative to the shuttle and to the mere experience. All right. John, actually we start pretty close to a timeline in most days, but it's more of a shopping list, if you see what I mean. I certainly didn't do it per the minute or per the hour if it wasn't related to a ground communication pass. And I just made a point of, in fact, my agreement with the Americans in the soup in the Russian control center, was they would just give me an English version of the Russian timeline, but without time. And he would just say, we want these experiments done today, these activities finished, do them when you can. And that was certainly flexible enough for me. And we, I think, executed that pretty well. I agree. I think you need some flexibility when you're in this sort of environment, trying to work all the time to a rather artificial schedule seems to me a very pointless. And I think you lose interest in it as a crew member. Of course. One thing I think you, I don't know if you have this, but it's a question. Are you tied to specific AOS, LOS times where they control team or not? Mike, no. We have no AOS or LOS periods. In fact, the 84, maybe the 81 crew had suggested maybe we should have some blackout periods with the crew on the inside. We did not instigate that for, particularly in our case, the safety reasons. But it is something certainly we'll be looking at when we go to further out missions on the ground here, such as Bioplex, which is our next phase. While I'm thinking about that, I do have a question for Scott and Vladimir about the EVA. I'm wondering how you both found it out there. Vladimir, I'm sure, has not been in the EMU on orbit before, but, and Scott, I'm wondering how you two got on together out there, and it must have been very beautiful looking up at me. Particular, it was, like I said, during the EVA, one of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen before. And it's sort of the buzzword for the crew, but it was unbelievable. And it truly was. And we had some surprises during the EVA. For one, my safety tether froze up, so I had to use an alternate tethering technique, which was fairly hand-fatiguing, but there was a pretty steep learning curve, and we were able to get the job done nonetheless. But I'll have memories of the spacewalk forever, in particular, one pass over to Andy's that was cloud-free, and we could just see forever the entire curvature of the Earth. And I just looked over at Volodya, and he had a grin from ear to ear. It was one of the happiest smiles I've ever seen in my life. And so that's a memory that I'll always cherish from this flight. I guess I'll pass it to you to talk about the differences between the suits. And yes, it has some differences between those suits, but it's not a big difference because both suits were created for spacewalk. And I expect new space suits, new joint space suits, where we take best devices from both suits and create it new for International Space Station. One last question for you guys up there, I guess, in terms of wrapping up. With missions on mere four months or greater from the US point of view, and stays on station scheduled to be in the same timeframe, how do you think we're gonna cope with missions to Mars, for example, of up to two years in length? Really good question, John, and I've talked a lot about that with the cosmonauts. And the big difference about being in space about the Earth on station mere or the International Space Station is that you have that beautiful view. And the thing is, if you're on a trip to Mars, I'm assuming you're talking about those long versions where you take about a six months to go there and about a year on the surface, then a six months back. The journey there and the journey back is gonna be where all the problem is. And you just have bright, see the sun coming in right now, it's totally black other than the sun out there if you look away from the Earth. And that's the way it'll be going to Mars. Absolutely dull, quite, quite dull and featureless during that trip. Very quickly, the Earth would become small and Mars would not be visible. And very soon the Earth would not be visible because of the brightness of the sun. And in those conditions, I think we'd be closer to what you're experiencing right now. You're gonna have to find things to do that keep you busy the whole time. And even though I saw some fairly hard things on mere, I was busy, I had things to do and the time went by pleasantly and fast enough. One of the most favorite things I did, and I hope you have something like this, I have no idea what you have, was a greenhouse. And all I had to do was go and write down temperatures and moisture for these plants. But I would grow, I'd grow three generations of seeds and had to make observations of very painstaking ones and then get the data down and discuss that with the investigators. But that experiment really kept me going in terms of my interest in the space flight. And I think not so much as making work for a crew that's going to Mars but actually just finding activities that are necessary on a ship like that and making sure that there's crew involvement in a very habitual way will help them greatly. Well, Mike, we copy that. And in fact, we are growing lettuce in here and relying on some wheat for some of our air revitalization. But as time's running short, we wish you folks Godspeed and farewell and we'll look forward to seeing on the ground in Houston fairly soon.