The Expedition One crew patch. Photo: NASA

Once initial activation and setup of the station is complete, the Expedition One and follow-on crews will work to a fairly standard schedule, using Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT, to mark the passage of time.

Until the U.S. laboratory module is installed and its computers assume overall control of the space station, the Russian mission control center just outside Moscow - MCC-M - will be in charge, assisted by flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

After the lab is in place, mission control in Houston - MCC-H - will be prime.

Crew wakeup will occur around 0600 GMT each day. Two-and-a-half hours is provided for breakfast and morning hygiene. Then at 0730, the crew will check their news, catch up on email and review the daily schedule of events.

At 0800 each day, the crew will participate in a planning conference with flight controllers on the ground. The day's formal schedule of activities will begin about 15 minutes later. Each crew member will spend two hours a day exercising.

The crew's formal activity will end each day around 1815 GMT. After reviewing the next day's flight plan and checking in with mission control for any updates, the crew will have two hours for dinner, work preparations for the next day and hygiene.

Crew sleep will begin around 2130 GMT.

On the ground, flight controllers will follow a four-day planning cycle. Four days in advance, U.S. and Russian flight controllers will exchange final inputs on upcoming activities and events. Each day's flight plan will be sent to the crew 24 hours in advance to provide time to make changes if necessary.

"I think the tenor of life on space station will be very much like what we had on Mir," Shepherd said. "I think Mir's a pretty good model. I think living on station is much more like being on a ship, or maybe a submarine, than flying in an airplane."

And that's a major change for NASA.

"On shuttle, everything is fairly carefully orchestrated because we don't have a lot of time during the mission, so the planning is very precise about what you're doing almost every minute," Shepherd said. "We won't have that on station.

"We'll get up every morning, look at the message traffic from the ground, try and figure out what the last-minute changes have been to the day's plans. We'll have a short conference with mission control to discuss this with the flight directors, then we'll get into the day's work.

"Part of that will be assembly and checkout of various pieces of station, maybe some tests on some gear that has been installed previously that we want to look at," he said. "It is a very serious requirement on board to get some exercise every day."

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