This morning we had our normal 8:00 am meeting to discuss the day's plans. Two crewmembers were absent without leave. We are hoping they can bring their mothers along on their next simulation to make sure they get up in time.

Mark informed us he was ready to go with the second part of his drilling experiment on EVA so we implemented that EVA plan. The EVA team consisted of Dave, Petra and Mark. They entered the airlock at 10:04 am and returned 3 hours and 24 minutes later. It had to be cut short due to inclement weather and very unsimulation-like rain. Mark was able to make one deep drilling. He is hoping to do this one more time on Saturday morning.

Due to the short EVA, most of the crew was able to take a good share of the afternoon off to relax or catch up on some much needed sleep.

Our computer system is completely functional so you may expect our normal delivery of reports and pictures this evening.

We had our evening meeting at 6:30 to discuss tomorrow's plans. Dave, Elia and Simone will be taking the University of Michigan rover on a long distance EVA to Salt Wash tomorrow to look for samples for their biology experiment.

Suit-up time is scheduled for 8:00 am. This is planned to be an all day affair. We expect French TV will be filming this activity without interfering with our simulation.

There is still one backpack with an intermittant switch that will be fixed tonight. The other two backpacks are working well with some temporary modifications to the switches.

Joan is working on getting the requested observatory materials together and shipping them out before we leave on Sunday morning. Petra will be making an inventory of our foodstocks and will deliver it to you tomorrow night. On Saturday afternoon I will coordinate with Charles Frankel and David Allred the MDRS shut down operations.