My flight plan for Thursday, 20th April 2006, showed one of the rare spare time slots our Mission Control Center grants us from time to time. Well, good, I thought, let's write some reports during these hours. Or start to clean the Hab - slowly we have to think of our return flight to Earth. It's approaching faster than we actually want. But then, our Health and Safety Officer fell off a ladder.

That turned my flight plan upside down. First, I heard the cries out of the EVA preparation room. Our Commander N. Frischauf, working on the Hab's WLAN connection, was the first to arrive at the accident victim; I followed shortly after him. In the first seconds of agitation and stress we didn't even see the cameraman behind our poor HSO: Very calmly, even leisurely, Christoph Kandler stood in the corner next to the airlock and filmed every single movement of the "Greenhorn First Aid Emergency Troop". At this point, I shall clarify that the entire AustroMars crew underwent extensive emergency aid training together with the Medical University of Graz and the Tyrolean Red Cross. But theory and practice (even simulated practice) are two things separated by a distance approximately similar to the one between Earth and Mars - at Conjunction, mind you!

Thus, our very first reaction was hectic. Very soon, however, we started to remember all steps we had learned. The wound was deep and long and smelled of ketchup. The Commander and I applied a sterile wound dressing and a pressure bandage, and then I had the romantic idea of having finished a successful first aid action and could return to flight plan duties.

I guess first aid is called FIRST aid because there's always a second aid. And not even 30 seconds had passed when our very (!) conscious accident victim politely reminded me of the next step: stitching the wound during a complete sterile surgery. My morning was gone. Several moments later I found myself on the Hab's first floor with a sterile surgical coat, sterile gloves, sterile mouth and head cover and a complete set of surgical instruments. Performing my surgery at the breakfast table was maybe a challenge for imagination, but during the work itself I had to concentrate enough to forget about my environment. When I pulled off my gloves at noon, I was tired and satisfied. I looked at a maybe not completely symetrically stiched wound, but it was made with love and passion, on Mars, more than you can ever ask from a professional surgeon.

To demonstrate the feasability and practicability of medical procedures like small surgeries is of great importance for AustroMars. And, after all, for "the real thing", a long-duration space mission to Mars. Nobody can predict what will happen during one year in space, and if wounds are not treated correctly, using the equipment at hand and dealing with circumstances like zero-G (during the flight), psychological and physiological stress, confinement and isolation, and many others, the crew might face more than severe problems. AustroMars performed a great deal of medical experiments during the last two weeks. Thanks to our excellent cooperation with many medical institutions and experts all over Austria, who willingly prepared the crew during many training sessions, the quality of the results is very satisfying.

When I watch the sun setting behind the mountains of Mars, I'm getting a bit sentimental. I have no idea how I will be able to go to the toilet without taking urine samples and mixing them with HCl, how I should walk outside without a PLSS, how I will be capable of sleeping more than six hours again, how I should find my way without precision GPS, how I should live without a flight plan (my God, imagine that: You get up in the morning and there's no Flight Plan!), how I will deal with the banalities of terrestrian life, how I will feel without my blue, worn-off flight suit.

I know exactly, however, that I will be very happy to have my apple, some "Parmigiano" chees and a glass of good Italian wine, finally. With the same sun setting behind a different landscape, on Earth.