Travis and Michelle Fitzgerald's blog

Yes, it’s been some time since we last posted here. Sorry about that. Since 10A landed, Michelle took a couple of days off, and my schedule at work quieted down a bit. Of course now I’m dealing with a lot of differences of opinions in the training world (management thinks they know how to design a training program, and the instructors disagree).

In the meantime, on orbit, Peggy, Dan, and Yuri made some historic changes to the ISS. They first moved the Shuttle’s docking port (PMA2) to it’s final location attached to Node 2 (that’s the module that the last Shuttle flight delivered). Then they moved Node 2 to its final location, to the front of the US Lab. They then performed a spacewalk to hook up all the cabling. With one of the 2 EVAs complete, we are almost ready for delivery of the European module, Columbus.

Here’s a picture of the “stack” (Node 2 with PMA 2 attached) being moved. The combined structure weighs 17.25 tons.

The flight to deliver Columbus is scheduled to launch Dec 6. That is my flight, and we are really looking forward to it. It looks like the launch window makes it so that there is no way that this flight will be in orbit over Christmas, which is great news! Michelle will most likely get her wish, and not have to work Thanksgiving or Christmas (she already volunteered for New Year’s, though).

We will be going to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving. Looks like it will be a smaller family gathering than usual, but it still should be fun. We’re bringing pumpkin pie and green bean casserole. Yummo.

Have a great Thanksgiving! (Special hello to all of Michelle’s family gathering in Michigan for the holiday. Wish we could be there!)

-Travis