Today we woke up on Mars for the first time and went right into planning for our first ATV EVA. I assigned Dave Scott, Joan Roch and Simone Kosol to the task since they all had previous ATV experience. One thing Flashline Station taught me is to not underestimate the difficulty of driving an ATV in simulation. Thankfully everything went well. The EVA lasted 3 hours and 22 minutes and covered about 20 km. We are going to do a similar one tomorrow led by Dave again but with the intent of giving the crew with less ATV experience a chance to get comfortable.

An interesting aspect of the full simulation mode so far is the exercise protocol. The NASA reference mission we are working to requires at least 1 hour of exercise per day for each crew member when they are not on EVA. Normally I exercise faithfully 6 days a week. But I have found it quite challenging to get the 1 hour in the last two days as have the others. Yesterday I did about a half hour, today 45 minutes. There is a lot of work that needs immediate attention so it is challenging to find a 1 hour block of time free. I can tell this will really be a struggle to follow.

Otherwise we are operating quite well under the constraints, although the need for more rest for the crew has become very apparent this evening. We are in one of those moods where bad jokes and puns lead to laughter attacks accompanied by tears. Or laughter comes for practically no reason at all.

The nice thing about this is that we are all in it together. I can look in the other crewmembers' eyes and see they feel about the same way I do. We are sharing the load and that makes it easier to bear. This is what is required for a crew on Mars, a good one at least.

Now it is time to try and encourage everyone (including myself) to get to bed - as soon as we stop laughing.