SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #314469

*Crew Begins Week With Maintenance and Experiments*

Image above: Venice, Italy, is featured in this image photographed by a crew member on the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA . TO VIEW IMAGE GO TO http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

The Expedition 15 crew begins the week with the replacement of several components in the Russian segment of the complex and medical experiments. Sunday was an off-duty day for the crew.

On Saturday, the station was reboosted by the Progress 24 cargo ship's engines to place it at the correct altitude for the docking of the ISS Progress 25 cargo craft on May 15. The reboost also provides at least six flight day three rendezvous opportunities for Atlantis during the STS-117 mission beginning on June 8.

Also over the weekend, Flight Engineer Sunita Williams conducted another weekend science session with the Capillary Flow Experiment, Interior Corner Flow 2. This experiment has applications to the management of liquid fuels, cryogens, water-based solutions and thermal fluids in spacecraft systems.

Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov completed another run of the Russian Diatomeya ocean observations program to record high production zones of phytoplankton. April and May are the period of most intensive blooming of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic waters.

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin conducted another session with the Russian Uragan Earth-imaging program, taking pictures of natural environment targets, including those showing man-made impacts on nature.

+ View Expedition 14 landing images http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/exp14_landing_images.html

+ Read more about Expedition 15 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/index.html + Read more about Expedition 14 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition14/index.html + View Crew's Daily Timelines http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/timelines/index.html