Official name of the day: "Dung day"

A day without simulated anomalies (at order of the crew psychologists) and without real EVAs -- bound to be boring, one might think. Nevertheless, two activities filled this day with action. Action of a different kind, one should add. The first activity covering the day was reporting, reporting and reporting. The crew had to catch up with a lot of issues that had been put on hold during the last few days. I must say that, with a cup of instant coffee, and just having completed all of my psychological tests for the afternoon, it is enjoyable.

It is a very interesting observation, and this is not meant sarcastically, how fast administrative issues start to take up your time. In "real life" I work as a lawyer at the European Space Agency ESA in Rome, surrounded by scientists and engineers, who complain all the time about bureaucracy (and us, the legal experts...). I did not really feel very sorry for my friends, but now I start to understand. On the other hand, science without documentation is a waste. And the more complex a mission is, the more we have to take care to update all people involved and to bring home a well-structured "package" of results. We are getting there!

And so we are documenting today.

Outside we have a Martian sandstorm as well. And for all who don't believe it... Go a bit closer to your screen or paper and look at my letters -- they are covered with fine sand. But if you REALLY want to know, I'll tell you the story behind today's storm. AustroMars is powered by our Mission Control Center in Salzburg, Austria, and by our On Site Support (OSS), three brave and crazy guys making the impossible possible on a constant basis. In real life, they don't exist, of course, because we are on Mars, hence OSS are our "ghosts of Mars". Ghosts are mostly invisible, but sometimes... sometimes ghosts have simply to put WLAN equipment under the MDRS hab. Hence the sandstorm. Take precautionary measures, cover windows, etc. The illusion of isolation is an important psychological aspect of any high fidelity analogue Mars surface mission.

Besides, we really have a strong storm outside and wait for reported thunderstorms tonight.

A day full of peace and sand at MDRS. But no. Today was "dung day", and this is unfortunately not meant metaphorically. The Greenhab greywater pump decided to quit working. Just like that. Our Flight Engineer Christian Hutsteiner and our Mission Specialist for Life Sciences, Markus Spiss, spent the morning diving through brown water in a search for the cause of the problem. And when they found it, they fortunatley were able to fix it. Just between us, Crew 48 was not permitted to go to the toilet for quite some hours. This little story reminds me of the complexity of toilets onboard spacecrafts, e.g. the Space Shuttle. You would think it is a simple thing, such a toilet, but it can be very tricky at times. FE and MSL are the heros of today. For various reasons we should grant them an extra shower.

The team spirit is good among all of us, we had a good night's sleep, we know our blood pressure, we gave our saliva and urine samples for the benefit of science, we answered hundreds of questions from the PsychoMars questionnaires and we are drinking water -- so much water like never before. Our Flight Surgeon at MCC told us to watch out for a good daily fluid balance. Compliance with a mysterious connection to the Greenhab pump problem... We worked on the Bio samples taken during the last EVAs, the geological samples, and concluded a detailed report on the first use of our sterile external EVA suits used for the "Track and Trace" contamination quantification experiment.

And for tonight... The flight plan foresees a movie evening, and guess what we have decided on -- THE RIGHT STUFF. Of course. A perfect world, if only... if only the flight plan would not foresee something else before that... cooking. Note to self: with the First Officer on galley duty, I'd better start to think about the menu.

Good morning Salzburg, good night Mars.