Midway through a grueling 16-day mission, the Endeavour astronauts took a second half-day off today, relaxing with their space station colleagues before a call this evening from Japan's prime minister, a round of media interviews and preparations for a fourth spacewalk Thursday.

"They have been going full throttle for the last several days," said station Flight Director Ginger Kerrick. "We knew this was going to be an extremely long mission, so we added an extra day between EVAs three and four to allow for some off-duty time."

The astronauts were awakened for their 10th "day" in space around 1:40 p.m. by a recording of Elvis Presley's "Burning Love" radioed up from Houston.

"Good morning, Endeavour, these were words from the 'King' for another sort of king, I guess, captain, U.S. Navy, MIke Foreman," radioed Canadian astronaut Julie Payette. "Good morning to you all."

"Good morning, Houston, and thank you Elvis," Foreman replied. "And I especially want to thank my wife, Lorrie, whom I've been with for a long time and I still have a burning love for her. I couldn't do it without you."

The Canadian Space Agency's Dextre maintenance robot, now fully assembled and mounted on the Destiny lab module, is in good shape and ready for use when needed. Kerrick said one minor glitch during testing Tuesday, when the robot's waist joint turned the opposite direction from what controllers expected, can easily be fixed with a software patch.

"It is on its new temporary home on the lab," Kerrick said. "I say temporary, but it'll stay there until we have a planned use for it. Right now, we don't have a planned use for it until the 2 J/A mission sometime next spring. It's in great shape. You may have heard about some software funnies as we attached it to the lab yesterday. We have taken a look at that, we understand what happened and it's just going to take a quick fix, nothing to worry about and no concerns for future operations."

Work with the mission's other major payload, a Japanese equipment storage room now attached to the station's Harmony module, also is complete, as are a variety of get-ahead tasks.

"There's not a whole lot of exciting things to tell you about that right now," Kerrick said. "They are done. They were pretty much done with the setup yesterday, not only on the activities that were scheduled for this docked mission, but also for the activities that were scheduled after the shuttle left, before the arrival of the next shuttle. So you'll see a couple of five- to 10-minute activities on the timeline but it's really just to take pictures and to document the configuration that it's in."

The astronauts will take a call from Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, this evening at 7:08 p.m. and participate in an interview with CBS News starting at 8:58 p.m. Here is an updated timeline of today's activity (in EDT and mission elapsed time; includes revision G of the NASA television schedule):

EDT........DD...HH...MM...EVENT

03/19/08
02:58 PM...08...12...30...ISS crew off duty
04:28 PM...08...14...00...STS crew off duty
07:08 PM...08...16...40...Japanese VIP event
08:58 PM...08...18...30...CBS News, NBC News, WMUR-TV interviews
09:28 PM...08...19...00...Joint crew meal
11:00 PM...08...20...32...Mission status briefing on NASA TV
11:13 PM...08...20...45...T-RAD tile repair preps
11:58 PM...08...21...30...EVA-4: Tools configured

03/20/08
01:28 AM...08...23...00...EVA-4: Procedures review
03:43 AM...09...01...15...EVA-4: Mask pre-breathe/tool config
04:38 AM...09...02...10...EVA-1: Airlock depress to 10.2 psi
04:58 AM...09...02...30...ISS crew sleep begins
05:28 AM...09...03...00...STS crew sleep begins
06:00 AM...09...03...32...Daily video highlights reel on NASA TV
10:30 AM...09...08...32...Flight director update on NASA TV
01:28 PM...09...11...00...Crew wakeup

Additional coverage for subscribers:
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VIDEO: TUESDAY NIGHT'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
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VIDEO: DEXTRE ROBOT ATTACHED TO DESTINY LAB MODULE PLAY

VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 8 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: TUESDAY MORNING'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: DEXTRE ROBOT FREED FROM LAUNCH PALLET PLAY
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VIDEO: SPACEWALKER UNABLE TO INSTALL MISSE EXPERIMENT PLAY
VIDEO: FIRST SPARE DCSU BOX PLACED ON THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: SPARE YAW JOINT FOR STATION ARM TRANSFERRED PLAY
VIDEO: MOUNTING PLATE ATTACHED TO COLUMBUS PLAY
VIDEO: DEXTRE ROBOT FITTED WITH TOOL HOLDER PLAY
VIDEO: TOOL PLATFORM ATTACHED TO DEXTRE PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED PREVIEW OF SPACEWALK NO. 3 PLAY

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VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 6 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
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VIDEO: SECOND ARM ATTACHED TO DEXTRE ROBOT PLAY
VIDEO: FIRST ARM ATTACHED TO THE DEXTRE ROBOT PLAY
VIDEO: SPACEWALKERS HELP DEXTRE DO A SIT-UP PLAY
VIDEO: SECOND DEXTRE ARM PULLED FROM LAUNCH CARRIER PLAY
VIDEO: FIRST ARM REMOVED FROM PALLET WITH FORCE PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED PREVIEW OF SPACEWALK NO. 2 PLAY

VIDEO: THE FLIGHT DAY 5 HIGHLIGHTS MOVIE PLAY
VIDEO: SATURDAY MORNING MEDIA INTERVIEWS PLAY
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VIDEO: SATURDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
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VIDEO: THURSDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
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VIDEO: NEW MODULE CONNECTED TO THE STATION PLAY
VIDEO: JAPANESE MODULE UNBERTHED FROM SHUTTLE PLAY
VIDEO: SPACEWALKER START ASSEMBLING DEXTRE ROBOT PLAY
VIDEO: JAPANESE MODULE PREPPED FOR UNBERTHING PLAY
VIDEO: HARMONY DOCKING PORT PREPPED PLAY
VIDEO: SPACEWALK NO. 1 BEGINS PLAY
VIDEO: NARRATED PREVIEW OF SPACEWALK NO. 1 PLAY
VIDEO: THURSDAY'S MISSION MANAGEMENT TEAM UPDATE PLAY

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VIDEO: SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR DOCKS TO SPACE STATION PLAY
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VIDEO: THE POST-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE PLAY
VIDEO: HIGHLIGHTS FROM ENDEAVOUR'S LAUNCH CAMPAIGN PLAY
VIDEO: HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAYLOADS' LAUNCH CAMPAIGN PLAY

VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: VAB ROOF PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PAD FRONT PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: PRESS SITE PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: WEST TOWER PLAY
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VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 049 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 050 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 051 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 054 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 061 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 063 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 070 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA 071 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-1 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-2 PLAY
VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAY: CAMERA CS-6 PLAY

VIDEO: FINAL PRE-LAUNCH POLLS GIVE "GO" FOR LIFTOFF PLAY
VIDEO: ENDEAVOUR'S CREW MODULE CLOSED FOR FLIGHT PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUT DOI CLIMBS INTO HIS SEAT PLAY
VIDEO: PILOT JOHNSON CLIMBS INTO HIS SEAT PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUT REISMAN CLIMBS INTO HIS SEAT PLAY
VIDEO: COMMANDER GORIE CLIMBS INTO HIS SEAT PLAY
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VIDEO: CREW DEPARTS QUARTERS FOR LAUNCH PAD PLAY
VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS DON SPACESUITS FOR LAUNCH PLAY
VIDEO: TIME-LAPSE MOVIE OF SUNSET OVER PAD 39A PLAY
VIDEO: MORNING PREPARATIONS AT LAUNCH PAD 39A PLAY
VIDEO: PAD GANTRY RETRACTED FOR LAUNCH PLAY

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VIDEO: OVERVIEW BRIEFING ON JAPAN'S KIBO FACILITIES PLAY
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VIDEO: SATURDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING PLAY
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VIDEO: FRIDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS AND WEATHER BRIEFING PLAY

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VIDEO: STS-123 MISSION OVERVIEW BRIEFING PLAY
VIDEO: BRIEFING ON THE SPACEWALKS PLAY
VIDEO: CREW'S PRE-FLIGHT BRIEFING PLAY
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VIDEO: CREW INTERVIEW: MS4 RICK LINNEHAN PLAY

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