Time: 20:07

Weather: low 30.7F (-.7C); high 72.5F (22.5C)

Crew Physical Status: Healthy, excited by the clear & warmer weather; one knife cut slicing bread

Narrative of Field Mission Results: At the 9am our Brahms "czar," Ron van Hoof, told us that it would take until noon to prepare the system for testing. We agreed to start then, but elusive bugs pushed it back until 15:30. The test was a revised script from yesterday, with the intent of demonstrating (or fixing): 1) Email of EVA data, 2) Repeaters working consistently, 3) FTP images working again, 4) Sample bag info conveyed to HabCom, 5) Spoken activity names recognized. The EVA lasted over two hours and we were elated by the results.

Based on good results yesterday, we ran the entire EVA with biosensors tracked every 5 minutes and GPS tracked every minute. This means that an agent in HabCom polled the appropriate external computers for data at that rate, and interpreted the values to determine whether alarms were required. When one astronaut accidently gave the wrong initialization (saying 5 minutes instead of 1), it was relatively easy to stop the tracking and change it to the correct value. This is a major change from a week ago, when just getting a response to a single command seemed so difficult.

The results were: 58 emails were sent out, repeaters worked well (though there are still lost signals due to the multipathing--reflective bounces), images were transmitted (but a false error was raised), the sample bag information was transmitted and emailed out, and all activity names were recognized (allowing full tracking of an EVA route and schedule for the first time).

Sending out email was particular sticky to resolve, and we're not done yet. We found that first Microsoft Office had to be installed on the machine, and then that Outlook needed to be running (even though we don't use it directly). Then our five addresses never worked (because one has two dots?); we tried forwarding but could only forward to one. Now that emailing of information is working, we are identifying gaps in what is sent out (e.g., photos and voice notes weren't sent because the path used by the ScienceOrganizer agent was incorrect).

The flexibility of the system was demonstrated by using the same activity plan as yesterday, but simply skipping steps. So the astronauts said "Start walk to Fork activity" and skipped "Start work at Fork activity."

The ERA participated in the Dry Wash work activity. Boudreaux was commanded by the ERA team remotely to move "autonomously" to various preset waypoints. A significant accomplishment involved having the astronauts move to an arbitrary location, name the location, and then command Boudreaux to go to that location. The name and GPS coordinates were communciated to the ERA via the Mobile Agents system, so the team teleoperating the EVA could command it to go to that place. (Full commanding by the astronauts directly is not fully implemented.)

Similarly, the astronauts named a location as part of logging a sample, then told the ERA to take a picture of the location. Standing next to the ERA one could hear it say, "I have taken a picture of location Bean." Furthermore, FTPing this image via the Mobile Agents system to the HabCom succeeded. This may sound rather simple, but it requires sophisticated integration of robotic control, voice recognition, and rule-based data processing-and two NASA centers working together as well!

Other voice commands are now working: "How much time is left?" (referring to the current activity), "Where am I?" and "Associate sample bag with ." We also demonstrated that it is possible to play back voice annotations from earlier in the EVA, not the just last one recorded. This was tested several times, including on the walk back to the hab.

Successes for the day include: We demonstrated that the ERA is integrated with the Mobile Agents system by having the astronauts name locations where the robot could be later teleoperated. The ERA can also take pictures of named locations (or "me" referring to the astronaut) directly, by voice command. We sent out EVA data automatically, directly from the work site to a remote location (simulating a communication from Mars to Earth). We used voice commanding to provide context to a monitoring system, which signaled appropriate scheduling and location deviation alerts. We learned (again) that setting up repeaters is exceedingly tedious and error prone. We ran the Mobile Agents system again for over two hours without crashing a single laptop, and while recovering system integration despite periodic loss of communications (in the middle of operations).

We met for about 45 minutes at 17:25 to review the test results and plan the next day.

From 18:20 until 20:00 four of us took a ride out to Lith Canyon to determine repeater placement to this site, which is about 5 km from the hab (line of sight).

Plans for Tomorrow: We will spend the morning (at least) setting up the repeaters (on Hab Ridge and on the ridge above Lith) to enable a Mobile Agents EVA at Lith Canyon. If all goes well, we will do a walk-through rehearsal, carrying the backpacks to test connectivity. We may go on a long ATV ride with the geologists to areas where we don't plan to do EVA tests, so they have an opportunity to see more of the region.

Report Transmission Schedule: Photos will be uploaded this evening or tomorrow afternoon.

Maintenance: Frank Schubert determined that the Generac is down a quart of oil again; we will need to check it every day. Frank left this evening. Aside from the generator failure Sunday morning, the hab's systems have performed flawlessly.

EVA Narrative/Data/Interpretations: NA

Inventory: Suggestions have been transmitted to mission support for restocking MDRS for the next crew.

Miscellaneous: Demonstrating the group's feeling of celebration, most of us wanted to be photographed standing next to our two geologist-astronauts, on the newly painted porch of MDRS.