The crew woke up at 6:30 a.m. and, while watching a beautiful sunrise, had breakfast. At the same time, we held our first briefing of the day. The German TV team also visited us again. After the daily engineering checks, we examined the ATV gauges, as we wanted the crew of EVA 02, who were preparing for their excursion, to have a good first experience with the ATVs. EVA team two consisted of Tom Dirlich, Heike Wierzchowski and Patrick Diel, and they began their expedition at 9:10 a.m. After driving around the habitat a couple of times, the team felt more confident and was able to drive away from the hab to a distance of approximately one mile. The EVA ended at 10:15 a.m. During this EVA, the team became more and more confident with using the ATVs and, in coordination with Habcom, it was decided to attempt a second EVA with the same team. The group returned to the Hab to pick up equipment and obtain new batteries in order to start an initial scouting EVA.

The EVA 03 team left the airlock at 11:05 a.m. Klaus Totzek remained at the hab with Horst Gehrmann, who was doing some housekeeping. Throughout this entire time, the TV team was with us and we had a lot of fun during their shoot. Sigrid (Sigi) Belzer was interviewed about the work that a geologist would do on a mission to Mars, and Klaus talked about the goals of The Mars Society. EVA 03 was very successful, ending at 12:15 p.m. During the expedition the team found some points of interest for geological drilling, which they marked. They sent back those GPS positions to the Hab.

We used lunch for an initial analysis of the EVAs and for a briefing regarding the afternoon work. We decided to test the handling of the drilling equipment in another EVA close to the Hab. Members of this EVA (EVA 04) were Klaus, Tom and Horst, while Heike served as Habcom. We started at 4:00 p.m. and finished at 5:00 p.m. Our initial findings were that it is very hard to use the drilling equipment dressed in a space suit.

We returned to the Hab and had a discussion about working with the drilling tools, which consist of steel rods that must be beat into the ground by a rubber hammer. It's a job that will be very sweaty.

While Tom prepared the dinner for the crew, we began to write our reports. Puh!!! There's a lot to report, but almost no time to report it in.

However, another problem then occurred. Horst, who before the mission had a bad flu, experienced a serious relapse. It was decided to move him from the MDRS to the Whispering Sands Motel in Hanksville to avoid infecting the other crewmembers.

Our plan for tomorrow is to make another EVA to take samples and try to drill at those landmarks identified on EVA 03.