After Tuesday being rather hectic for the crew, today was rather relaxed in comparison. Ironically, today was as productive, if not more so, than yesterday. Today was scaled back to only one EVA, allowing the crew more time to work on various re-engineering tasks inside and outside of the Hab.

First thing in the morning, Jason began tracing the wiring for the Hab's internal water pumps, and mapping out a new method to have the two pumps controlled by two independent switches. This task was spread throughout the day, and with Dennis's assistance, was finished in the early evening.

At 11:00 Don Foutz arrived with fresh water and gasoline supplies. He also brought with him the new diesel generator which will be replacing the Generac propane generator. For obvious safety reasons, the work on this switch was done out-of-sim. After going through the procedure of the new generator, and shutting off the Generac, an incompatibility of the plug on the power cord and the diesel generator was noticed. The Generac was reconnected, despite the waning levels in the propane tanks. Don Foutz is currently obtaining an adapter which will allow for the full switch over. This evening the propane levels dipped to severely low levels, so a switch to the backup gasoline generator was made. This, unfortunately, will require crew members to wake up at 6:00 to refill the generator, which only has an eight hour fuel capacity.

Today also saw the crew's first biology EVA. On EVA 5, Amy, Daniel, Dennis, Jason and Ryan traveled south of the Hab about a kilometer and conducted basic soil sample procedures. After returning from the excursion, Amy prepared the samples for their six day incubation period before they can be analyzed. While today's exercise was certainly not monumental, it helped the crew establish a lot of the procedure that is being worked out with the RST.

Despite yesterday being filled with so much confusion between the RST and the crew concerning the procedure of the tele-science operations, today ran rather smoothly. The crew is finally becoming comfortable with the steps necessary for sample collection, and the RST is gaining a lot of familiarity with the pitfalls of having engineers conduct scientific field research.

Tomorrow will be another two-EVA day for the crew, however they will be spaced well enough to allow a lot of the re-engineering and tele-engineering to continue around the Hab. The crew seems to be settling in to the routine and work rather well, and is becoming very comfortable with the rather large workload.

It is becoming evident that one of the strong features of this crew is that five of the members are college students. For them, long hours, hard work, high expectations, limited resources, high stress and no pay are all second nature. Coupled with Dennis's strong work ethic, science background and experience, Crew 25 is a finely oiled machine. Everyone has been responding superbly, and the crew continues to experience a great deal of success. This trend isn't likely to slow down anytime soon.