In a time slot not foreseen by our flightplan, I prepared a little good bye present for my crewmates. It was today between two and four o clock in the morning; as Executive Officer, I had signed off since a while already, as Alexander Soucek I was still on duty. Not very intelligent, our Flight Surgeon and our Mission Control center would have said most probably. Too tired tomorrow! Not enough sleep! But night's my nature. And my most productive time window, given that I have my mind free, my body under a blanket, my laptop on my knees and music in my ears. And so I turned some of the most stunning images of the last two weeks into old fashioned-looking, yet enhanced black-and-white images.

When the colour fades away - like our most immanent experiences and memories will fade with time - the essential becomes visible. And that's the nucleus that will stay with us, that we part and pass on. The idea of creating AustroMars two years ago, when Gernot, Norbert and I had still more but less grey hair; the many weekends of brainstorming and the constantly re-appearing question: Can we make it? Shall we do it? And then: We did it. The more than 120 people doing it with us. The fascination spreading like a fever epidemic across Austria. The Austrian public landing for the first time on Mars.

New friends. New experiences. New projects. Walking on the thin border line of enthusiasm and frustration, for so many months.

All those memories can be seen in the black-and-white photos of tired, bearded men in dirty blue flight-suits decorated with paint and HCl acid holes. We have learned a lot during the last weeks, and I am not only talking about science and engineering. Spitting in little plastic tubes is important to monitor the Cortison level indicating stress development, but it is not what you take home in your heart, and what you communicate to children at school. It is not what makes it special to have been here, even if it is the purpose of our mission.

MDRS is a unique place, maybe one of the very few places to live a piece of tomorrow. Nevertheless I want to be honest and remark that this station didn't make it always easy for us. I wonder what would have happened to our "high-fidelity" mission if we had not engineers and technicians in our crew, who repaired pumps, helped with electricity problems, power generator cut-downs, broken greywater systems and an internet constantly breaking down. My first impression arriving at "the Hab", late at night in complete darkness, with the hab's portholes illuminated, was simply: breathtaking. Beating of the heart. My first impression standing inside: student hostel atmosphere. A space (actually, sorry, planetary surface) station with wooden stairs, cornflakes packages, seven folding chairs in six colours, isolation foam everywhere and posters on a light blue wall. Hm. But it became our home on a hostile planet. I guess that future Mars stations will actually look a bit like student! Hostels, because to live in a confined, sterile and technical place for years would drive everyone crazy who has a heart under his or her worked-out astronaut body. On Mars, you will try your best to be reminded of everyday life on Earth. Just here, on Earth, it does not help escaping everyday life during the few days you have. Maybe it wouldn't take too much: painting the yellow isolation foam white, fixing loose parts of the wall, putting six similar and comfortable chairs around a nice table. It was interesting to hear that the crew had one thought in common: The part reminding you most of a station on another planet, the part helping you to escape from this world, is the outer hatch of the main airlock. Even if you cannot lock it and therefore strong winds fling it open occasionally (killing the crew...), it is simply - cool.

But on the other hand, this is not an adventure holiday hotel or Disneyland. It is just enough to serve its purpose - and it serves it well. It's unique in itself. And science can be done regardless of cornflakes packages and yellow isolation foam. We have performed seventeen (17!) experiments from a large range of disciplines in close cooperation with our PIs back in Europe; we will come home with much, much data. I think, we - the team of MDRS and Mars Society, the Mission Control Center in Salzburg, all supporters, scientists, administrators, and last but not least the crew, can be proud of what has been achieved by AustroMars. The outreach effort has reached dimensions never imagined before, and together with strong science and engineering cases, this will be the basis to plan new steps, whenever, wherever...

Tomorrow I will finally have my apple (if I find one in Hanksville). The day after tomorrow, I will have my Italian wine and my fresh bred and cheese enjoying the lights of Rome by night from my roof terrace. Then, I will look up to the starry night sky and see this faint reddish light near the western horizon.

I will miss Mars.