Phase 2 of our stay here on Mars is now complete. Today was the final day of our three day full simulation of staying on Mars. While I awoke at the usual time of 0800, I let other members of the crew sleep through a little bit latter than usual owing to the late night we had last night restoring power to the hab. Although I did not go to bed until 0350 this morning, I felt surprisingly refreshed and ready to start the day at 0800.

The rest of the crew were all up by around 1045 and we had the morning brief by 1100. Today we had scheduled to have two afternoon EVAs. One EVA was to see how the dynamics of an all female crew would work, with the supplementary goal of taking water samples from various locations and testing them back at the hab. This EVA was to involve Susmita and Heather.

The other was to have the goal of taking Edwin's prototype rover and deploy it using a new pulley and boom system to be deployed off of the back of an ATV.

As we started the briefing late we decided to schedule the EVAs for around 1500. After the briefing I went downstairs and continued my cleanup of the suit up area and rationalizing equipment such as tools and cables. After a short period, Jamon and Richard came down to assist. I put up a series of hooks in the suit up room to separate out the multitude of different comms gear that we had, which up until now had sat in a huge tangled pile in a corner. I also placed flashlights at the base of the stairs, opening of the airlock and above the bed in my room (intention to extend this to all crew rooms), secured by Velcro straps, as we had seen that when the power goes down, it is very difficult to get a torch unless it is right next to you. For that reason, torches have been placed in positions that all of the crew knows the location of.

After lunch routine duties such as the GreenHab check and the generator refill were conducted. When the crew members responsible for this came back inside, they reported that one of the temperature sensors outside was reading 105 degrees farenheit (almost 40 degrees Celsius). I thought that this temperature was probably too hot to go out in, especially in suits, so I decided to postpone the EVAs for the day as it was now a little after 1500 and the temperature had been rising since 1300. It would probably be too late to start an EVA beyond 1600 so I told the crew to continue with personal projects and maintaining the hab.

>From 1530 until around 1900, we swung into action and the hab was like an episode of "Home Improvement". Jamon and Richard cleaned up areas of the hab and swept up the downstairs area. I put in a towel rack in the bathroom, fixed up one of the shelves in the bathroom cabinet, put up a shower curtain rod and then fitted a new shower curtain. For someone like me who is used to working primarily on paper, it was very liberating to be able do some work with my hands for a change. I had a smug sense of achievement after looking at my shower curtain and bathroom cabinet handiwork.

Also in my rummaging through equipment today, I found three small solar cells, each with an output of around 7.5V when full sunlight was incident on the cells. After discussing this with other members of the crew, the intention will be to try and hook them up to the communications relay, thus removing the need to constantly check the power status of the relay. I think this will be a very interesting project and I'm really looking forward to carrying this little project through from design to implementation and verification.

Tomorrow we will pull back from full simulation conditions and have a days break. I have allowed the crew to organize a social event for this evening and to mark the completion of phase 2. Tomorrow there will be no EVAs and the crew will be allowed to catch up on personal projects, and for strategic planning on such things as EVAs and planning for phase three.

I have seen the crew grow in confidence in phase two and although they are happy to have completed it and be able to go outside tomorrow, they are aware that they will have to extend themselves a little bit further to get through the full five days of simulation.