This is my last day of commander of Crew 36. A day I have mixed feelings about. I have enjoyed excecuting this research project with my crew, they are a good bunch of people. It's also been a lot of fun applying engineering analysis to a scientific realm. It is amazing to see how when you bring two scientific disciplines together a lot can be done.

Today we continued to analyze the data, but moreso on the engineering side of things. We have seen that each feature at each site will require different flight techniques to analyze. Each site presents a unique set of challenges to safe operation, and thus we felt that surveying some of these sites firsthand would help us make a better analysis.

We decided that we did indeed want to visit these sites, and planned an EVA to do so. However, this being our last day, everyone wanted to go and unfortunately there were only four working suits. So rather than perform a half-sim, we decided to go out unsuited. The work went well. At each site we were able to determine what the geologists wanted to see, make an analysis of what sort of flying patterns were neccessary, and evaluate what sort of landing conditions that we were presented with.

Even though its was a small dataset, it will help the engineering analysis greatly to have had a firsthand look at the areas that geologists want to operate in. Excellent indeed.

In addition to the scienctific work we did, we did all sorts of neccessary hab maintenance tasks. I think this was good for the crew as it gave us some time to let our minds roam free & get some exercise. I think that people enjoy such work when it's done in order to maintain their own homes (which is what the MDRS feels like).

We also had a visit from a group of students from Bringham-Young University. It came as a surprise. As I was walking out the front door of the hab I saw two large vehicles drive up and group of 10 or so students come out. It was unexpected, but ultimately welcome. It seems as if all of the students were part of an independent study class that allows students to design & carry out their own research projects. What I thought was cool about it was the fact that the class was started only recently entirely out of student interest. In the hour of their visit we detailed our project & showed them the pertinent results so far and listened to the details of their own personal projects. Personally I was refreshed. In my normal life I don't observe many people with such passion and inspiration as I beleived these people to have.

In all this has been a great experience & has shown me the power of initiative and ingenuity.