Today was our first day in sim. We barely noticed a difference given the current intense operational tempo. Even though my intent had been to make this first day a bit more relaxed, our schedule (and our ambitions) caught up with us. But it seems like everyone on this crew enjoys getting things accomplished while working on leaving the hab in even better shape than what we found it in. Kudos to our Mr-Fix-It team, they are doing an amazing job. Well, I guess that level of skill and dedication is what can be expected from the first "Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech" crew - everyone is a hell of an engineer :-)

On top of all the hab organization and improvement efforts, we kicked off our research program today, with EVA03 dedicated to deploying the portable PID soil analysis device for the first time, and EVA04 intended to familiarize everyone with the basics of navigating an ATV over challenging terrain while wearing an EVA suit, in preparation for the long-range EVAs expected in support of the balloon-borne repeater project.

Since I had the most experience with that type of activity, I led two groups of crewmembers over the familiarization course near the hab that Paul Graham had shown me on Monday. Again, every single crewmember exceeded expectations. Crewmembers who had mounted an ATV for the first time only yesterday navigated safely over steep inclines and sudden drop-offs, all while being constrained by their EVA suits. And, judging from the smiles and high-fives, they also had a lot of fun doing it.

We noticed that inclement weather is on the way and strong rains will almost certainly hit us tonight. (What an amazing level of sophistication Western civilization has reached, to have near-real-time satellite and Doppler radar imagery available at the click of a mouse, in the middle of the desert) Tonight's cloudy skies mean that even with the telescope up and running, we would have had to cancel the first round of observations for our astronomy project. Let's hope for better luck, both on the weather and on the spare parts side, for the second observation window next Tuesday.

One in-sim day down, and many more to go - I look forward to every single one of them.

Signing off for today,

Jan Osburg
Commander, MDRS Crew 37

PS: Random thought of the day: the alphabetized list of last names on our mission patch reads like the station crew consisted of only three guys: Anderson Brewer, Christian Fink, and Martin Osburg :-)