Barely slept — went to bed at 3 AM. Cleaning, cleaning. We’re exhausted. It even shows on our faces. Today was a test of the transport ship’s motion control system. We were off by one minute on starting the flexible cycle for the 2-second test engine firing because we hadn’t synchronized our hand watches, which had drifted a minute ahead. We entered the comm session, reported it, and ran the engine ignition from the instrument panel. Everything went fine, no issues. We closed the hatch to the cargo ship. That’s it — that road is now closed. Little by little we’re saying goodbye to the station. I continue working with Piramig and PSN — the last frames of the Earth’s nighttime horizon. We filmed Canopus passing through the first emission layer of the Earth — a grayish band near the horizon that’s always well visible. We filmed the twinkling of Canopus for one minute.

I watched the nighttime Earth as we passed over Europe — the ground is lit with a gray, mottled glow, with bright lines marking the main avenues of cities. I photographed nighttime cities of South America with the PSN camera. Made 10 frames of the Earth’s horizon with Piramig. In the dark I hit my forehead on the corner of the Orlan spacesuit mount while filming — broke the skin, drew blood, my head is ringing. Slept a little and got up. Started the Korund program. Mission Control asked: “Do you drink cold water? Do you feel like it? Or always warm? Sometimes you just crave cold water.” That’s true on Earth, but up here, for some reason, you don’t.