International Space Station Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev will enjoy a day off Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving. The holiday highlights a week in orbit of robotics operations, routine maintenance and early preparations for a shipment of supplies and Christmas gifts.

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Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev this week checked the clothes, tools and plans they will use for a five and half-hour spacewalk set for Nov. 7.

McArthur and Tokarev will mark five years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station Nov. 2. They are the 12th station crew. The first station crew, Commander Bill Shepherd, Flight Engineers Sergei Krikalev and Soyuz Commander Yuri Gidzenko, arrived at the fledgling complex Nov. 2, 2000. The size of an efficiency apartment at that time, the station has grown to a volume larger than the average three-bedroom house with the most sophisticated laboratory ever to fly in space.

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Growing increasingly familiar with their microgravity home and laboratory in space, the 12th international space station crew turned
its attention to experiment work, began preparations for the first space
station-based spacewalk using U.S. suits since 2003 and captured spectacular images and video of the latest tropical cyclone in the
Atlantic basin, Hurricane Wilma.

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Preparations for arrival of the next crew of the space station,
scientific activities and maintenance highlighted this week's activities
aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Science Officer John
Phillips also spent some time packing up for their own return home,
readying their launch and entry suits. They checked out the Soyuz
spacecraft that brought them to the station April 16 to make sure it is
ready to take them back to Earth.

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A 2½-ton delivery arrived at the back door of the International Space Station today as an unpiloted Russian cargo ship linked up to the Zvezda module's docking port at 9:42 a.m. CDT, filled with supplies for Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and Flight Engineer John Phillips and spare parts for repair to some Station systems.

The crewmembers were inside Zvezda monitoring the automated docking as ISS flew 220 statute miles above Central Asia near northern Kazakhstan at the time of contact and capture. Once leak checks are completed, Krikalev and Phillips will open the hatch to Progress later today and
will begin to unload its contents on Sunday.

A new shipment of supplies is on its way to the International Space Station. The ISS Progress 19 resupply vehicle lifted off today from its
launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 8:08 a.m. CDT (7:08 p.m. Baikonur time). Less than 10 minutes later, the cargo ship
reached orbit, and its solar arrays and navigational antennas were deployed for its two-day trip to the orbital outpost.

From AMSAT Sarex reflector:
The International Space Station's Expedition 11 crewmembers completed 20 weeks in space this week and focused on an upcoming cargo ship exchange and computer software transition.

Commander Sergei Krikalev and Flight Engineer and NASA ISS Science Officer John Phillips spent time packing the docked ISS Progress 18 supply ship with items no longer needed on the Station. The unpiloted cargo craft will be undocked from the Zvezda module's aft port at 5:23 p.m. CDT Wednesday. The Progress will later burn up in Earth's atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.

The residents of the International Space Station this week unloaded cargo delivered to them last month by Discovery's astronauts, prepared for the arrival of more supplies and repaired a key component of the outpost's environmental control system.

In the fifth month of their six-month mission, Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Flight Engineer and Science Officer John Phillips completed the unpacking of cargo bags transferred to the Station's Zarya module from the Shuttle Discovery three weeks ago. They planned to unload other bags stowed in the Unity and Zvezda modules in the days ahead. All of the unpacked items were entered into the Station's computerized inventory system.

Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and NASA Science Officer John Phillips will go outside the International Space Station this Thursday on a spacewalk to remove, replace and photograph experiments and relocate equipment.

Krikalev, designated EV1, will be making his eighth spacewalk. This is Phillips' first spacewalk.

The International Space Station crew and STS-114 astronauts continue to unload supplies and equipment from the Raffaello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. Raffaello, a reusable cargo carrier, arrived at the Station in
Space Shuttle Discovery's payload bay. It was attached to the ISS on Friday. Before Raffaello is returned to the payload bay for the trip
home, the crews will fill it with unneeded items from the Station.