After some time off over the weekend, the Expedition 25 crew aboard the International Space Station began another work week Monday with a focus on the departure of three of its crew members.

Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineer Shannon Walker continued ongoing training and preparations for their departure with Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin, who will serve as Soyuz commander during their descent. The trio is set to depart the station and return to Earth Nov. 25 at 11:46 p.m. EST (Nov. 26 at 10:46 a.m. Kazakhstan time) aboard the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft, landing in Kazakhstan a few hours later.

The Soyuz undocking will mark the beginning of Expedition 26 led by Commander Scott Kelly, currently an Expedition 25 flight engineer. Flight Engineers Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka will continue their stay aboard the station with Kelly.

Skripochka continued the process of unloading cargo from the ISS Progress 40 cargo craft that docked to the Pirs docking compartment in October. Once emptied, Progress 40 will be filled with trash and station discards and deorbited to burn in the Earth's atmosphere like its predecessors.

Kelly conducted cooling loop maintenance on the U.S. spacesuits in preparation for spacewalks scheduled to be performed during the STS-133 mission next month.

Kaleri and Skripochka conducted a session with the Russian behavioral assessment TYPOLOGY, which measures a crew member's psychophysical state and ability to withstand stress, to perform and to communicate. An electroencephalogram measures and records the electrical activity of the brain.

Walker answered questions about life on the station and her daily activities during an in-flight interview with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the "StarTalk Radio" program.

earlier related report

External Tank Scans Continue as Foam Replacement Completed

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, teams will continue performing scans of stringers accessible from within the environmental enclosure on space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank. Technicians completed applying replacement foam on the tank over the weekend.

The Space Shuttle Program will review the analysis and repairs that are required to safely launch shuttle Discovery on its STS-133 mission at a special Program Requirements Control Board session Wednesday. Pending a successful review of the flight rationale at that meeting, a Launch Status Briefing would be held with senior NASA management on Monday, Nov. 29.

Kennedy's "Call-to-Stations" to begin the launch countdown will be no earlier than Nov. 30, supporting a first launch attempt no earlier than Dec. 3 at about 2:52 a.m. EST.

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