. >>> joining us from the international space station is commander steven swanson currently onboard. commander swanson, welcome to c-span. >> thank you very much. >> commander swanson, if you wouldn't mind, tell us a little bit about the current activities of the international space station. how many members of crew do you have and generally, what are you doing? >> good question. we have six crew members up here right now. three russians, two americans, and one german. mostly we do science up here. we have over 170 experiments going on right now. but also, we have to maintain the station, and keep it running smoothly and efficiently. >> commander, with the science experiments that you're currently conducting, can you tell us a couple of things, generally, what areas do they fall into, and why is it that these need to be conducted in an atmosphere such as yours? >> yeah, so they vary tremendously. we have outside the alpha magnetic spectrometer, which is looking for dark energy and dark matter. something that we're trying to figure out just the basics physics of how our universe came

. >> commander steven swanson, who is on-board the international space station, talking to us about experiences there. commander, thanks for talking with c-span. >> my pleasure. take care. >>> live now at the congressional hispanic caucus institute's 2014 public conference, this is at the reagan building in downtown washington, d.c. we'll be hearing discussions with community leaders and politicians on public policy affecting latino americans. speakers this morning include congressman rubin heene hoe is a and the chair of the congressional latin caucus and the director of the u.s. office personnel management. we'll bring you this morning's session, then later on this afternoon at 1:30 on c-span 2, we'll bring you the continuation of the live coverage ocoverage. ♪ >> also welcome senior manager for data and information at casa de maryland, senior guzman. >> welcome, everyone. please be seated. welcome. i'm privileged to welcome you to the opening sessions of chci's 2014 policy conference. this conference provides a great platform for discussing major policy issues affecting the latina community