NASA says the Expedition 14 International Space Station crew is performing routine station maintenance and cleaning as it begins its 6-month duty period. European Space Agency flight engineer Thomas Reiter of Germany finished his third and final day Monday of a kidney stone experiment session.
That long-range investigation involves taking a daily ingestion of either potassium citrate or a placebo and is designed determine whether potassium citrate is effective in preventing formation of kidney stones in space. Cmdr. Michael Lopez-Alegria is continuing work this week on station computers by reloading them with updated software, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
The software upgrades included a new Inventory Management System and new client and file server versions. The software reloads involved nine "client" laptops and a file server laptop.
