Slept well, mood is good. Got up early; today is a hard, decisive day — the last attitude dynamics session on the station, where we wrap up operations related to autonomous navigation. This involves stabilization in space, identifying stars, aiming the Puma sight at them, recording those moments, and calculating the stars’ positions in the station’s axes. Then we enter the stars’ coordinates into the computer and calculate the station’s orientation in space from them, and then, inputting the coordinates of the desired target, we slew to it.

At first everything went well, then in shadow we fell into an unplanned mode when we switched on manual orientation, which the program didn’t foresee, and we couldn’t tell whether pressing the measurement button would trigger a slew to the target or not. We decided to shut down Delta and re-enter everything from scratch, setting up the mode again. In the end, I didn’t even expect that we’d slew with an accuracy of 1-1.5 degrees.

Today, fuel transfer from the cargo ship is in full swing, commanded from Mission Control, but no longer for us — for the next expedition. The atmosphere is like before a long journey or moving to a new apartment. Bags and equipment everywhere. We’re doing inventory.

We talked with Ekrem, the shift flight director. He says: “Your work is hard to evaluate — you’ve done so much.” I hear Zhenya add: “You’ve plowed such a field that even if someone wanted to, it would be hard to cover it with stones.” That’s it, the flight is ending; I feel wistful, but after some time, I’m sure, just as a geologist or polar explorer is drawn back to the field or the North, I’ll be drawn to flight again — which means fighting my way through once more.

Right now I’m waiting for sunset to photograph it. Our loved ones are probably getting ready for the landing, tidying up their apartments. We unloaded the MKF and packed the film. I can feel that we’ll be heading home soon.

We drew a solid bottom line. They’re pleased with our work. Good thing today’s program wasn’t ruined — otherwise we could have seriously spoiled our mood at the very end.