After the bags and suitcases were loaded, two minivans were sent to pick up the AustroMars equipment/experiments from William Fung-Schwarz. Everything was retrieved but the AustroMars-Rover, which is supposedly still on its way from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. Having loaded in the AustroMars equipment/experiments, we picked up Helene Keller (the AustroMars artist) from the airport, bought the required food supplies and some additional clothing and moved on to Hanksville.

From here the AustroMars split into two; while the Backup crew and the visitors stayed in Hanksville, the crew moved on to the MDRS to meet crew 47.

After a hearty welcome ("Welcome Crew 48" in red-white-red, the Austrian colors), Commander Jan Osburg and his crew gave us an excellent 1-hour briefing of the critical MDRS systems and the upgrades that they had done. Finally we went to bed to enjoy our first night in the MDRS, three of us slept in the loft, the other three ones in the second floor.

As soon as the new day started dawning the AustroMars crew left the habitat and climbed up repeater hill to watch the sunrise - a magnificent experience. Afterwards we had a final chat with crew 47 and bid them a nice farewell. The rest of the morning was used for unpacking our stuff and getting more familiar with the MDRS. Our visitors and the reports enjoyed a tour through the MDRS surroundings and the habitat.

In becoming familiar with the ATVs, the little hick-ups of the vehicles got fixed. ATV No. 3 ("the barking one") was examined to have a loose throttle line, once this was repaired and the spark plugs were cleaned this vehicle started to run smoothly again.

The major anomaly of today was the breakdown of Wendy. We had shut it down to identify the reason for the diesel leakage, which happened to be at the fuel pump. When we tried to start it up again, Wendy did not come up for unclear reasons. Don Foutz came over at 16:00, but could not fix Wendy either, neither changing the oil nor the air intake filter, nor re-charging the batteries helped to mitigate the problem.

At the end the starter was identified as a root cause for the starting problem. A spare starter will be available earliest on Tuesday, until then we will re-charge the Hab's batteries with our two cars and an associated set of starter cables.

One of the highlights of today was the successful test of the AustroMars Aerobot, a powered paraglider, which will be used for airborne reconnaissance for the AustroMars rover and particular EVAs. Despite gusty winds we managed to start and land the aerobot successfully. Our confidence is such that tomorrow we will conduct the next tests with the areobot, this time using the gloves of the space suit while being in control.

Norbert Frischauf
Commander, MDRS Crew 48