The Endeavour crew and Expedition 28 Flight Engineer Ron Garan were awakened at 8:26 p.m. EDT to the song “Svegliarsi La Mattina (Woke Up This Morning)” by the Italian duo Zero Assoluto, uplinked especially for Mission Specialist Roberto Vittori of Italy. Today the crew will prepare equipment and review procedures for the mission’s third spacewalk on Flight Day 10 and participate in two series of media interviews at 12:36 a.m. and 6:43 a.m. The mission status briefing will take place at 1 a.m.
Three station crew members who were aboard at their arrival have now departed to return to Earth this evening. Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA Flight Engineer Cady Coleman and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli undocked from the space station at 5:15 p.m. and will return to Earth inside their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft at 10:26 p.m. NASA Television coverage begins at 9:15 p.m.
Remaining on the station with the shuttle crew are three members of the Expedition 28 crew: Commander Andrey Borisenko, NASA astronaut Ron Garan and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev. By Thursday, all nine aboard will have shifted to the same sleep cycle, making all crew members available for transfer operations during the remainder of the shuttle mission.