Astronomy (Jenny): Sadly, the clouds are again preventing us from making observations and taking pictures with the CCD camera.

Biology (Meryl): The plants were watered with 2000mL water today. The peas planted on 3/21/06 have started to sprout. The lettuce plants that were washed and replanted on 3/21/06 have flies and aphids; pictures will be posted on WebDav in the 20060327 folder. The other plants remain healthy.

Water quality testing began today in the GreenHab tanks. Today's samples were taken from the surface of each tank. Our results are included below. We attempted to examine samples from tanks 1-5 with the microscope, but the magnification is not high enough to differentiate any organisms.

Results:

• pH was neutral (7.0 or very near) for all tanks.
• Ammonia was at or greater than 8ppm for all tanks; 8ppm is the upper limit for our particular test kit, so we will try diluting the samples tomorrow to obtain more accurate results.
• Nitrite and nitrate concentrations were 0ppm for all tanks.

We will continue to test these parameters over the next five days. We will try to obtain samples from various depths within the tanks in order to assess nutrient level throughout the tanks. We are particularly interested in nutrient flow between aerobic and anaerobic tanks.

Celestial Navigation (Jenny): The clouds also prevented successful sextant observations on today's EVA.

Communication and Navigation (Jan): Today's EVA was the first to use all features of our Amateur Radio-based integrated communication/navigation system, and it worked out great! We had APRS locator beacons on each EVA suit backpack, one voice repeater up on Radio Ridge (400m northwest of the hab), and a digipeater (digital repeater, to increase the range of our APRS signals) on a lower hill west of the hab. Our base station remained at the hab, with an antenna mounted on top of the hab, next to the roof hatch, and was connected to a laptop running APRS software to display the EVA position at the hab and push the data to the Internet.

This setup gave us voice and data coverage all the way south on Lowell Highway, up to the highway (about 5 km). It also allowed Mission Support (and anyone else who was interested) to follow the EVA progress on a web browser, with less than a minute's delay.

Our setup is based on commercially-available ham radio equipment, which is robust enough for the task and, while not really cheap, may be affordable for crews that have some money for research equipment. Here is the list of the gear we used for this EVA, with approximate cost:

• Two Kenwood D-700A mobile stations ($500 each, one as base station, one as digipeater)
• A Pelican case ($150) plus a lawnmower battery ($25) for the digipeater
• Two Diamond mobile antennas with magnetic mounts (about $70 each, one on top of the hab, one on the digipeater Peli case)
• Three Kenwood TH-D7A handhelds ($350 each) for the beacons
• Three Garmin Etrex Legend GPS receivers ($150 each) for the beacons
• $100 in misc. parts, connectors and cables
• One PC laptop to run the APRS software (UI-View32; donationware) at the hab

The crossband repeater (Icom IC-W32A handheld) adds another $250 (plus a tripod or similar mount) to the tab but is not needed for APRS.

The only custom-built part is a pass-through for the digipeater antenna cable in the Peli case, soldered from Radio Shack parts. At least one EVA participant and someone at the hab must be a licensed ham radio operator. Of course it is best if everyone is a ham, as in our crew!

Limiting factor at the moment is battery life of the handheld transceivers (two to four hours).

Real-time EVA position data was available on the Internet at the following links:

• http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=ki4mss-7%2Cki4ntp-7%2Cki4nis-7& to po=8&gmap=0&units=metric
• http://db.aprsworld.net/datamart/switch.php?call=KI4MSS-7&maps=yes
• http://db.aprsworld.net/datamart/switch.php?call=KI4NTP-7&maps=yes
• http://db.aprsworld.net/datamart/switch.php?call=KI4NIS-7&maps=yes

Callsigns were: KI4MSS-7 (Anne), KI4NTP-7 (Jason) and KI4NIS-7 (Jenny).

After the EVA, these links still provide archived APRS data that can be visualized with the appropriate software. The Crew 47 website will provide screenshots of the EVA route with the next update.

Human Factors (Jan): The participants keep taking MASCOT and MOODY tests.

Radiation (Jason): The two-level radiation shielding test was set up today. However, due to an experimentation error, no data was collected regarding the radiation shielding efficacy. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the sand bag thicknesses were recorded for the one- and two-level shielding strategies, so a quantitative comparison of increased shielding can be tested on the next EVA to the area.

For a two-hour long EVA to the same area, a future plan will include the measurements that should have been taken today, as well as an additional plan to take measurements inside a natural nook within the landscape.