Boot Camp: We have been familiarizing ourselves with the local geography and geology. We went on a two-mile hike yesterday to become familiar with the cumbersome gear that is necessary for the Mars environment. One of the sandy slopes we hiked would collapse and become more difficult with each person that traveled over it. The team was able to pull me (the last person in the chain) up, and as a result we have decided to try to take a rope next time. We are also learning which types of soil will give us issues in our future travels. This was also a great workout that I am reliving today.

The team was able to get all three ATV's running today. We took them out for a test ride around the Hab and found it difficult to come back, because they were a blast to ride.

Astronomy: Bob, Louise, and I checked out the Musk observatory today. The automated system and the manual movement systems are not working. The telescope and the observatory themselves seem to be in reasonable condition. Bob has been in contact with the manufacturer of the telescope, and we hope to be able to view the stars in a sky with very little light pollution soon.

Modeling: I am working on 3D modeling with a digital camera project that was suggested by Monty Stein, who also volunteered to do the post processing of the data. I have started taking some trial pictures for the automated 3D modeling with a digital camera of the Hab area. I talked with some of our crew about having them take some of the pictures on their EVA's; they seemed eager to participate. I will be going over the procedure with them, and I will loan them my camera for the experiment (each camera will have different optics that influence the resulting image). We will calibrate the camera after I return from the mission.

On the lighter side of things, I found that one can use jasper to score glass well enough to get a clean break of the glass. I bet you are wondering why I would care - I will explain later.