Welcome home.

Those words came in an email written by Gus Frederick, the MDRS Webmaster, regarding my return to the Hab. I also received an email from Rocky Persaud, who sent a record of the exact number of days I have spent on analog Mars—one hundred and one, counting today, with two months of those days spent here at MDRS.

No wonder it feels like home. That is one constant here.

Another constant about life on analog Mars is that it can be challenging. We have a crewmember that was too sick to stay at the Hab so we took her to Hanksville this morning to get some much-needed rest. We will pick her up tomorrow. In addition, two of the crew had car trouble in Oklahoma, so their arrival is delayed for another day. Fortunately, their car was repaired today, so they will be here tomorrow evening.

We have one more crewmember arriving this evening. Until then, we are a crew of three women scientists. Ironically, all three of us were supposed to be a part of the shakedown crew back in 2000, but things didn't work out. So it's pretty neat that we are finally here together now.

There is a lot of maintenance and cleaning needed in and around the Hab so we decided to spend the day out of sim dealing with some of these issues. Veronica began her cleanup and inventory of the lab. Stacy continued her Herculean efforts to beautify the Hab with some painting. Late this afternoon they set off to get a little research done.

Meanwhile, back at the Hab, I took on the trench and ALMOST won. The trench, excavated during the refit, is 65 meters long and mostly about half a meter deep and wide. The regolith is piled in a two-meter swath on one side. So far, crews had filled in about 20 meters.

I completed another 41 meters today. I was down to the final four meters when, although my mind was still willing, my body said no way. I figured I had done enough to claim victory anyway. The whole thing still needs some leveling work, but I'll finish that at the end of the week.

Another friend, Brian Enke, has written a book, “Shadows of Medusa”, about a mission to Mars. My favorite line is from a scene where the crew is setting up their base after their arrival on the planet:

Patience. Do everything in order. Step by step, we're settling a new world.

Tomorrow we will move a little bit forward still. That's another constant on analog Mars. And every little step moves us closer to the day we move off this planet and on to Mars.