Woke up at 10 AM to the “Call to comm” audio signal activated by the ground. Hard day ahead — we need to figure out whether we can rely on the star tracker AO-1 for orientation and the sextant S-2 for stabilization. In the morning we proposed to the ground a test to verify sextant S-2 and asked for settings for 3-4 stars, so that we could see one of them in the center of the window. We’d already confirmed that at zero settings, when a star is in the center of AO-1, it’s also visible in the center of sextant S-2. On the star tracker’s black mask, Tolya scored star marks at 1-degree intervals from center, so that when the main star is centered in both instruments after orientation, we could sequentially move from one mark to another, steering the star into them by rotating the station. Meanwhile, I changed the settings of the sextant’s main “Delta” channel one and two at the same interval, checking whether they corresponded to the star’s position in the center.

Finally, by selecting settings, we found the star in the main S-2 channel, then used the “Gamma” setting to find another star in the movable secondary channel. With the “Phi” setting I brought both stars onto the bisector line. It worked. Held stabilization for about 15 minutes. Accuracy approximately one arc minute.

Before lunch we put on a tape of Chaliapin. Wonderful — “Dubinushka” spread spaciously through the station. My soul felt light. Then some dance music came on, and I, hanging in the air, decided to dance the squat-kick. I got flipped over, and it was hilarious how I flailed in the air — that’s what happens without a solid footing. Tolya laughed.

I observed Cape Horn in South America. It’s winter in these latitudes now. Beautiful, somehow majestic — these mountains covered in snow, with two large twin lakes of greenish-turquoise water.

From life I’ve learned: if everything is going well for a person, they sometimes don’t understand another’s difficulties — can’t or won’t understand, because only their own matters are important. Everything is fine for them. And only if they’ve been through a lot themselves does another’s pain become clear and close to them.