The last few days at MDRS have reminded me of the importance of field work. Not only is it very different than the work you do in the laboratory, but at times it also creates interesting and surprising results you can't get in any other way.

Today's EVA was planned to last 3-3.5 hours and explore areas both north and south of the Habitat. But when doing fieldwork, things do not always go as planned. And sure enough, even 4 hours and 46 minutes was not enough time to cover all the planned territory on EVA 5. A review of the EVA #5 map that has been forwarded to mission support shows just how different things turned out today.

Learning how to conduct scientific research in the field only comes with experience, experience working in the field. The crews at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station and MDRS need to learn these lessons early to have a productive simulation.

The first piece of field work I ever did for my Ph.D. dissertation required shipping about 400 pounds of Mars lander cameras up to the Arctic in about 10 containers. This amount of equipment proved very time consuming to pack, transport and unpack everyday in the field. I was able to accomplish a few important tasks but many objectives had to be abandoned due to lack of time.

Even though the experience was frustrating it also revealed important characteristics about the equipment I was testing -- things I never could have learned in a controlled laboratory environment. So even though field work can be difficult at times, the results are worth the investment. The thing to do is to plan ahead, make sure your experimental set-up is optimized for the environment, and then plan some more.

By the time I finished my dissertation and was awarded my doctorate, I had a better appreciation of what types of questions are good to try and answer through field work and those that are not. Through this learning process I became convinced of the great benefits field trials offer. I also learned how to do it in a better way. For instance, the equipment I brought with me to MDRS fits in one box and weighs under 45 lbs.

I have spent a lot of time over the last few days with that equipment and again the experience has not been disappointing. I found that the form of illumination I had been planning on using for making optical dust measurements, and seemed to work fine in the lab, really was not optimum once I was able to test it out here. Thanks to the versatility of the equipment, I am now getting nice results.

In addition, due to the dust content in the air, the instrument's optics are becoming contaminated even though the lens cells are well sealed. Obviously a design change will be required before sending a similar instrument to Mars. Fortunately the optics can be cleaned here. And thanks to the presence of the dust at a particular location in the optical path, I have been fortunate enough to personally observe for the first time one of the more interesting phenomena described by Fresnel diffraction theory. Perhaps you remember from your undergraduate physics classes that due to diffraction, the shadow pattern behind a small particle will not be completely dark but will actually have a bright spot right where you would expect it to be darkest. Thanks to the dust, I've seen such lovely patterns here.

We do not know what other interesting lessons MDRS has waiting for us. The important thing for us is to continue working forward and to listen to what the simulation has to tell us. Some lessons will help us get to Mars. Others will produce benefits unrelated to reaching the Red Planet. Nevertheless, the intent of Crew 18 is to make everything we can out of this opportunity and add it to our body of knowledge.

Tomorrow we will go on EVA again. Tomorow we will be initiating further experimentation. Without places like MDRS, the lessons learned from such endeavors would be impossible to obtain. We are happy to be here. And we are just getting started.