The overnight EVA that took place the evening of May 5 into the mid morning of May 6 was very useful but placed significant demands on both the EVA and IVA crew.

Base camp was set up by Ephi Morphew and Steve McDaniel during the late afternoon EVA of 5 May. The site had been selected during a prior EVA by Ephi and Penny Boston. It is located just off the road to Schubert Pass, approximately 100 m from the pass summit on the Hab side. The area is nice and level with minimal small pebbles but abundant larger rocks for camp use.

It was very hot and windy, thus pitching camp was difficult. Staking tents proved untenable. The bentonite hardpan is typically a few inches to tens of inches deep. It is virtually impossible to break through for staking purposes. At the same time, the fluffy upper layers have no cohesion and do not support stakes. Thus, guy wire rigging attached to rocks was essential to support tents. Steve recommends that the guy wires be pre-tied onto the tents back at the hab because of the difficulty of executing knots with gloves on.

Moving large rocks to secure the tent guy ropes caused Ephi to overstress old injury sites, vertebral discs L3, L4, and L5. She did not realize this until later in the evening when she began to experience pain and stiffness. Her mobility has been seriously compromised since this reinjury.

If possible, prior knowledge of likely wind patterns at a given season might help avoid camp establishment during high wind periods. Rain flies were hard to deploy in wind and probably not necessary as the incidence of rainfall at this season is very low.

The EVA team of Kelly Snook, Sam Burbank, and Penny Boston left for the remote site at about 8:30pm. Kelly rode an ATV with gear and Sam and Penny walked. The stroll under the brilliant, starry sky in the stark hills and landforms of the desert was described as "magical" by Sam. It was a spirit-lifting experience for all of us.

Overnight EVA Scenario - For the purposes of simulation, we envisioned a perimeter around the three tent cluster at the camp site that was enclosed in an inflatable bivouac allowing shirt-sleeve conditions within this bubble. Fortunately, the air was completely still for most of our stay so this contributed to the ambiance. Within this "bubble perimeter", Kelly Snook set up her small portable telescope and we watched planets, especially Jupiter and its beautiful moons, in the photometric seeing conditions.

Kelly worked on musical themes and fragments during the late night hours. Sam did some filming. The crew chatted about astronomy, life, and times until about midnight or so when sleep overcame them, one by one. At approximately 3:30am, Penny took a 45 minute foray to look for fluorescent minerals or organisms using longwave (~360nm) and shortwave (~310nm) ultraviolet lights. In the morning, Sam and Kelly worked on music and fleshing out the fragments that Kelly had developed over night while Penny photographed the rock formations, fossils, and textures within the bubble perimeter.

Steve McDaniel arrived at camp on an ATV at about 9:30 to start striking camp. At 11am, the Overnight crew left to return to the Hab. The trip was very slow due to immobility and pain in Penny's leg and lower back. We discovered that there are many, many, many tiny baby steps between Schubert Pass and the hab.

We are planning another EVA to Factory Butte for 7 May for sample collection.