Today was another beautiful day, no rain, no mud, and plenty of sunshine.

Peter resumed work on the tunnel project and the Observatory web cam will show the first several sections up, working back from the Green Hab. However, the Health and Safety Officer pulled a "bones" number on this "Kirk" and made him take the rest of the day off.

That's why we also have our first science report tonight.

Most of us are enjoying Laurel's well thought out and tasty vegetarian "early space frontier" recipes, except Laurel, who has been in bed all day but seems to be feeling better tonight. William took over Hab Mom duties for the day.

We are starting to work with Wanda, our new Hab server.

Leslie is starting her GreenHab study, and both she and I made a run in her shuttle craft to the raid the Lagrange I station Green River stores for needed parts both for her project and for the tunnel project.

We landed back on analog Luna at 7:15 PM.

Tomorrow, Leslie expects to start her GreenHab study in earnest. And the tunnel construction should go into high gear, now that the hardest first part is done. There are a growing list of things that we have not been able to get into, both because we have all been busy during the day, and because uploading reports is very tedious without broadband access. We've finally figured out how to use the WebDav system to upload pictures. Somehow that know-how was not passed on to us. Not sure if that is our fault or not.

Last night the stars were out in all their glory, and after the new Moon was down, William and I went out to surrender our souls to the Milky Way as you never see it anywhere else. The closest town of 5,000 people is more than a hundred miles away. This is really dark sky country.

We are eager to start our pedestrian nighttime EVAs, all planned within line of sight of the Hab, but by the time we are done with our reports the pillows are calling.

Our crew is a very compatible one, and we are all very much enjoying this opportunity to make some small difference. We are very grateful, too, for all the support back on Earth.

The utility systems continue to purr. We "have it made" in comparison to some of the crews that preceded us, and we are all too well aware that it is the hard work of previous crew engineers in consort with the MDRS engineering team that deserve our gratitude. Thanks guys, from Steven and all of us, for your splendid work.

Peter Kokh
Commander, MDRS Crew 45
Artemis Moonbase Sim 1