To start, let me thank Crew 12 for their great cooperation when the handing over the habitat. We regret that we could not meet you all in person.

All of the members of Crew 13 finally arrived safely at the MDRS. Unfortunately, we lost one day of the simulation because of transfer problems from Salt Lake City (SLC) to the MDRS. A lot of snow made it impossible to drive to the habitat on Saturday evening. Additionally, Tom Dirlich's flight arrived at SLC four hours later than planned. Five members of the crew finally made it to the habitat on Saturday afternoon following an 8.5-hour ride through ice and snow.

After arriving at MDRS, Susan Francis and Arno Wielders from Crew 12 did a great job of training us. Klaus then drove both Susan and Arno to SLC and picked up Tom.

We all arrived at MDRS at about 11.00 a.m.

The other crewmembers already had worked outside the station to repair some things that were damaged by strong winds on Friday.

A German film team was also waiting for the rest of the crew today. After unloading the car, we immediately started our first crew meeting at 12:30, where we discussed and determined the work for the rest of the day. The film team accompanied us the entire time. After the crew meeting, we began to prepare for our very first EVA. Because it was our first time, it took longer than we had theoretically planned during the meeting. We also found that most of the radios did not work and that parts of the attachment rings for affixing the space-suit helmets needed to be repaired (a job we will have to do tomorrow).

There were four crewmembers on our first EVA (EVA number one). Geologist Sigrid Belzer, biologist Patrick Diel, engineer Tom Dirlich and commander Klaus Totzek. The EVA lasted approximately one hour and we walked into northeasterly direction. This particular EVA was used to familiarize ourselves with walking in a space suit and how we can use equipment like cameras, etc. A few minutes before sunset, the EVA team returned to the MDRS habitat.

The TV team filmed everything we did on the EVA. After removing the suits and unpacking the equipment for the other experiments, we had a little review of the day. We then had dinner, which has been prepared by Tom and Sigrid, followed by a discussion of the work that will need to be done tomorrow.

I am going to keep this first report short. I'm very tired, but glad to be here with such a compatible crew.

We enjoyed our first day on Mars.

Let's go Mars!