Today was very exciting, but also exhausting. Exciting insofar as we had several "firsts" for this crew: first in-sim EVA, first suited-up ATV training, first in-sim tests of field procedures for radiation, celestial navigation and communicatons/navigation research, completion of the engineering section clean up effort, and last but not least first observations with the Musk telescope.

The crew also started adhering to a new procedure that will make our simulation more fidelitous: for those outside tasks that need to be performed "out of sim" for safety reasons (mainly ATV, generator and GreenHab maintenance), the assigned crewmembers will now be wearing Tyvek suits. This will not only reinforce the simulation constraints, but will also help to protect our regular clothing from any contamination with fuel or other hazardous fluids.

Contributors to the exhaustion, apart from the cold, dry desert climate, were issues with the balloon/robot equipment and with the generator start module. The former will likely cause us to manually work the balloons for a significant part of the mission, while the latter means that we will have to continue managing the battery bank charging status by manually switching the generator on and off.

All in all, we have experienced another exciting day of field research at MDRS, and we are looking forward to tomorrow's adventures.

Signing off for today,

Jan Osburg
Commander, MDRS Crew 47