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Julie Payette's Journal

L-7 days Johnson Space Center,
Houston TX - Saturday, June 6, 2009 -
11:00 p.m.

It is 11:00 PM, Saturday June 6, and it is time for the STS-127 crew to enter quarantine. Tonight I leave my house and won't be back until I return from space, in over three weeks.

The Astronaut Quarantine Facility (or Crew Quarters) is located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, not far from where I live. It's strange to be moving away from home to a place only a few kilometres away.

Astronauts are quarantined to protect them from potential infections that could affect the mission - things like common colds or stomach viruses. The quarantine quarters where we stay are isolated from the other buildings of the training centre and only a few people, screened by the NASA doctors, have access to them.

We'll stay in these Crew Quarters for only 2 days. Then, on Monday night, we'll board a NASA plane and fly to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the final countdown.

Back at home, I'm all packed and ready to leave. I stop by my little one's bedroom on my way out. He's asleep. Saying goodbye is harder on me than on him. He is well aware of what is happening and knows about quarantine, but that does not seem to affect him much. In his world, it is pretty normal for a parent to leave on a mission and then return from space. Such is the world of the children of astronauts and the only world he's ever known. For him, space flight is fun, but not that big of a deal.

My husband Billie accompanies me to Crew Quarters and will stay for a few hours. Most of my colleagues and their spouses have already arrived. It may be late, but the crew's evening is just beginning. We will have to stay up a good part of the night so we can begin synchronizing our schedule to the Space Station's time zone. For an early morning launch on June 13th, we will have to move our time clocks forward by 12 hours. We will do this adjustment gradually, at a rate of 2 hours a night. For example, tonight, L-7, we will go to bed at 4 a.m. Tomorrow, L-6, at 6 a.m. And so on. This will continue until our "normal" day starts at 10:00 p.m. and ends at lunch the next day.

The hectic pace of training slows down in quarantine. For the first time in many weeks, we can catch our breath and take advantage of some precious time to put our affairs in order, finalize our preparations and review flight plans and procedures.

It's real now. The countdown to launch STS-127 has begun.