Today was a sad day. Late this morning, Randy came upstairs from the work area to inform us that he was not able to fix the structural damage that Red Flyer had sustained in yesterday's landing. Fortunately, it seems that it is only the airframe that is damaged beyond repair and that all of the equipment inside is salvagable. So effectively, the Red Flyer still has its insides intact, it just needs a new shell.

However the beloved flyer has done it's job. Today Stacy and Amber analyzed the aerial video and have determined that it is rich with geological information, information that they would not have been able to obtain from any other perspective.

To verify this, they examined a aerial map (courtesy of USGS) of the area in which we performed our EVA. It was clear that the amount of detail from the Red Flyer's video was far greater than any large scale aerial photo. From only a minute of video they were able to pick out 14 frames of interest. Within these frames seems to be an astonishing amount of geological information, which by their estimation will take them several months to analyze.

I personally am exstatic about the results. Even from the preliminary results it seems that we have experimentally verified the benefits of aerial reconnisaince.

In addition to today's analysis we were also active performing maintenance tasks around the hab. Don stopped by and dropped off the new water tank, which we dug a small hole for. We were also given a crash course in ATV maintenance by Don, which will come in handy for the phase II crew. They have a lot of field work to do & they'll need them.

We're about ready now to finish filling in the ditch in front of the water tank so that our friendly martian don can back his rover into the area & fill it directly from the vehicle.

We're planning one more EVA tommorrow before the first phase's crew departs and the second phase begins. During this EVA we will try to get a better idea of what sort of environments an aerial vehicle would have to operate.

There's a long road ahead of us, but overall, I'd say our mission is becoming accomplished. My last eight months (and endless coming months) seem to be worth it.

Even from the beggining it was unclear whether or not this project would work out or not. Operating an aerial vehicle in this sort of extreme environment is risky, and it was very possible that we could've ended up with no data at all. But you can't let that stop you. If everyone did that, humanity would never have advanced to the point it has.

It was something I wanted to do, and something that I thought could bring about an advance in scientific knowledge. And I, and all of my compatriots did it.

I thank everybody who has been involved in this project. We've done something great.

Ad Astra