NASA astronaut Ed Lu, the flight engineer and science officer living aboard the international space station, snapped this image Thursday near the time of a total lunar eclipse.

Credit: NASA

Here is the latest station status report:

Expedition 7 Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu have completed their two weeks of orientation on the International Space Station and are ready to start regular operations in earnest.

Each ISS crew undergoes orientation sessions to become familiar with its new home during the first two weeks of the mission, as has Expedition 7. This week, Malenchenko and Lu, along with flight controllers on the ground, also went through fire and emergency evacuation procedures.

Malenchenko and Lu also did maintenance throughout the station. They focused on the Russian Zvezda Service Module by cleaning out the ventilation duct work and taking inventory of the Russian communication system equipment. Lu also worked with the U.S. defibrillator unit and checked out the system.

The E7 crewmembers harvested their first crop on the ISS. The "Red and White" peas harvested were planted by the Expedition 6 crew. They were part of the Russian PLANTS-2 experiment.

Lu worked in the U.S. laboratory Destiny on daily science payload status checks and is scheduled to work with the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) next week. Lu will activate the InSPACE (Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions) experiment inside the MSG on Monday. InSPACE studies new fluids that may help improve brake systems, robotics, airplane landing gear and vibration damper systems.

On Thursday, Lu took digital photos of the lunar eclipse.

Meanwhile, the Expedition 6 crew remains at Star City, the Russian cosmonaut training center near Moscow, after its landing in Kazakhstan on May 3. Commander Ken Bowersox, Cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit are undergoing debriefings and physical rehabilitation. Bowersox and Pettit are scheduled to return to Johnson Space Center next week.