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Passing the time in spaceposted May 28, 2011 7:39 a.m. CDT

The crews of space shuttle Endeavour and Expedition 28 began Flight Day 13 of the STS-134 mission at 7:01 p.m. CDT Friday to the song "Will You Carry Me?" performed by Michael FitzPatrick. FitzPatrick has been an Electrical, Environmental, Consumables and Mechanical, or EECOM, flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center for more than 20 years and supported 80 missions.

At just around the time they were waking up, STS-134 mission specialist Mike Fincke set a new American record, logging the most time in space by a U.S. astronaut. He surpassed the prior record holder, chief astronaut Peggy Whitson's 376 days, 17 hours and 22 minutes, in the course of his three missions.

"It's certainly an honor to get a chance to fly up in space, and especially for long periods of time," Fincke told collectSPACE from orbit Thursday.

Fincke now ranks number 20 on the list of world space explorers, behind 19 Russian cosmonauts. Chief cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is ranked first with more than 803 days.

"Any records that are happening now, even the greatest on the Russian side of 804 days, that's all going to be long forgotten when humans really start to explore the solar system," Fincke told collectSPACE.

Fincke, together with his shuttle and station crewmates turned their focus to the last of their joint-crew activities today, performing maintenance on station systems, reconfiguring the spacesuits used during the STS-134's four spacewalks, and continuing the transfer of cargo between the shuttle and station.

Fincke and mission specialist Greg Chamitoff worked on replacing one of the beds for the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA). Meanwhile, STS-134 commander Mark Kelly, station flight engineer Ron Garan, and mission specialist Drew Feustel will reconfigure the spacesuits used on yesterday's last of the shuttle spacewalks.

Feustel later joined European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori to continue transferring cargo between the shuttle and station. Pilot Greg Johnson and Kelly also participated in a study of spinal elongation during spaceflight.

Earlier in their day, Kelly, Johnson, and Garan answered questions about their mission from a gathering of 100 local public school students from Tucson, the University of Arizona and NASA Space Grant partners.

At 7:46 a.m. on Saturday, Johnson will talk with television reporters from Michigan and Ohio.

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