The Expedition 18 crew readied for future spacewalks Friday as it wrapped up a busy week filled with science and preparations for the arrival of the next International Space Station crew.

Flight Engineer Sandy Magnus cleaned some debris from oxygen hose coupling devices in the Quest airlock. The hoses are used during campouts that help astronauts prepare their bodies for spacewalks.

Shuttle program managers have tentatively set March 12 as the launch date of space shuttle Discovery and the STS-119 mission. The STS-119 crew will conduct four spacewalks and install the final set of power-generating solar arrays on the station.

Topics in this report:
1. Upcoming School Contact
2. Upcoming ARISS Simulated Contacts
3. Fassett Middle School Contact Successful
4. Australian Contact Successful
5. Italian School Questions Astronaut
6. New York Contact Successful
7. Astronaut Training Status
8. ARRL Announces Dayton Hamvention Guest Speaker
9. Richard Garriott, Keynote Speaker at AMSAT Banquet
10. AMSAT Story on SuitSat Meeting
11. Amateur Radio Newsline Covers ARISS Contact

1. Upcoming School Contact
An Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact has been scheduled with Padthaway Primary School in Padthaway, SA, Australia on Tuesday, March 3 at 08:32 UTC via telebridge station W6SRJ in California. To prepare for the contact, children wrote essays on space related topics. They chose a planet to analyze for feasibility of life, looked at the life of an astronaut (training, diet, etc), researched an event in space history and created a timeline of important events in space history. Media coverage is planned.