Today the second correction of our orbit was made using only the cargo ship’s engine. The ground began orienting the station at 4 AM. I woke from dull thuds — like sitting inside a barrel being hit with a stick. During the station’s rotation, it feels like a train — jostling. The ground controlled the dynamics and engine firing automatically. I remember, before the flight, the project engineers had been exploring the idea of running some dynamics experiments during crew sleep, by ground command, to pack more into the program. I was against it then, and now I’m convinced I was right. It’s one or the other — either sleep or experiments. So we didn’t sleep until morning, lying in half-sleep, interestedly predicting and waiting for what would happen next, involuntarily getting drawn into the work mentally. We couldn’t take it, got up in our underwear and went to the control post. At 8:46 AM the cargo ship’s engine fired. It ran for 160 seconds. The velocity change was converted to orbital altitude change — each meter per second of delta-V raises or lowers the opposite point of the orbit by 3.5 kilometers, depending on whether we’re braking or accelerating.

Interestingly, when the engine was running, from the acceleration — seemingly slight — all the handheld equipment from the transport ship floated through the orbital module into the work compartment as if carried by a river current, bumping against hatches and equipment, while we, as if in water, caught it and dodged flying cameras, bags. I hung an eraser on a string and tracked the engine’s stability by watching the acceleration change. The eraser, like a pendulum, deflected horizontally and hung there.

During the day, more medical experiments. We try to put on the belts and stick on the sensors early, checking signal quality, then sit undressed waiting for the comm session when telemetry starts transmitting to the ground. I froze — station temperature 18 degrees. After medicine, I ran on the treadmill for about 50 minutes at a good pace. Warmed up. Sweat, like a jellyfish, sat on my forehead, bobbing in rhythm, running across my face, not spreading or dripping.

A pen case with wheat tissue culture has floated away somewhere. It contains wheat cells planted on a nutrient medium that can reproduce chains of like cells, growing to large sizes.

Our green crew is growing poorly. The cilantro rose 4-5 centimeters and wilted. Only the cucumber sprouts are holding strong. The borage and radish wilted right away.

We’re in shadow. I gaze at the stars, having turned off the light in the orbital module and half-closed the work compartment hatch so its light doesn’t interfere. Against the black void of space there’s a mass of bright stars and a scattering of faint ones, like a winter night forest covered in frost.