The STS-116 crew members visited NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week for the crew equipment interface test. The test is a routine part of astronaut training and launch preparations, and allows astronauts to get hands-on with the equipment and flight hardware that will be used during the mission.

Source: http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48hour/msg00041.html

On Wednesday the crew conducted a test of the Space Video Gateway to be used in November for the first HDTV interactive downlinks with the Discovery Channel and NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai). The hardware was provided by NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for temporary installation on the space station.

Source: http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48hour/msg00043.html

NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency have named two astronauts and two cosmonauts to make up the the next International Space Station crew, Expedition 15. Astronauts Clayton Anderson, KD5PLA, and Daniel Tani, KD5TXE, will travel to the station next year as flight engineers. While their duty tours will not coincide, if the current schedule holds, there will always be at least one US and one Russian radio amateur aboard the ISS for the next year. Cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin, RN3FI, and Oleg Kotov will spend six months aboard the orbiting laboratory.

The International Space Station's Expedition 14 crew went for a short ride this week, performed maintenance and experiments aboard the growing outpost and celebrated one crew member's 100th day in space.

The Federal Communications Commission released a Report and Order which modifies several amateur radio regulations. Several aspects of the amateur rules are addressed. Two key areas will affect operators interested in space communications.
These include:
Retransmission of Space Station Communications
Space Station Launch Notification (to the FCC)
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/news/

Mission controllers have turned off one of four spinning gyroscopes that keep the International Space Station properly positioned in space because it was vibrating excessively.

Although the space station needs only two of the four devices functioning, having one down could be troublesome in December during space shuttle Discovery's mission to the orbiting outpost.

Info at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/061002_ap_iss_gyro.html

The Expedition 14 crew members boarded their Soyuz spacecraft Tuesday for a short move. With Soyuz Commander Tyurin at the controls, they undocked from the Zvezda port at 3:14 p.m. EDT and redocked to the Earth-facing Zarya module port at 3:34 p.m. This relocation frees the Zvezda's docking port for the arrival of a new Russian Progress cargo spacecraft later this month.
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/sarex/48hour/msg00032.html

Expedition 14 completed its first full week solo on the International
Space Station performing standard early mission checks and drills plus some equipment troubleshooting.

Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer
Mikhail Tyurin have been aboard the station for 19 days, while Flight
Engineer Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency is in his third
month in orbit. Along with other work, the crew members prepared this week for a short trip away from the station next week, when they will fly the Soyuz spacecraft from one docking port to another.

The all-ham crew of the International Space Station will take a brief ride around the space outpost October 10. Expedition 14 Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria, KE5GTK, Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, RZ3FT, and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, DF4TR, will shut down vital station systems and undock their Soyuz spacecraft from its port at the aft end of the Zvezda Service Module. "They will then take a 30-minute trip that will relocate the Soyuz to the Earth-facing docking port on the station's Zarya module," NASA said this week. "The maneuver will free Zvezda's docking port for the arrival of a new Russian Progress cargo spacecraft later this month. Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin are still settling in for their six-month stay in space. Reiter has been aboard the ISS since the summer. No Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) school contacts are on the schedule until later this month.

Recent meetings with NASA officials have laid the foundation for the future of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program and, at the same time, garnered accolades for Amateur Radio. ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, and ARISS International Secretary-Treasurer Rosalie White, K1STO, met with NASA staffers at Johnson Spaceflight Center (JSC) in Houston in late summer. Sponsorship of the ARISS program is moving from NASA Headquarters to JSC. White said the planning sessions touched bases with a half-dozen JSC offices. She described them as "stepping stones" to the realization of future ARISS projects and programs