Time on MDRS, as it will be on Mars, is a precious resource. We try to plan our days in advance in great detail so as to make the most of it. But for many of our activities we are at the mercy of the elements, so things don't always go to plan.

Here at MDRS we have the Musk Observatory, equipped with a Celestron CGE-1400 18" Schmidt Cassegrain telescope which the crew has been looking forward to using since our arrival. However, despite the clear sunny skies that we have had on many of our days, so far we have not been lucky at night. The sky was perfect on the night we arrived, but that was taken up completely with our hand over briefing, and we were not to know that the conditions would not last. We still have two nights left, but it is beginning to look like we might be unlucky there.

We have been luckier with the daytime conditions, with only one day affected by rain. If the conditions had been less kind, we could have had a very different rotation.

Today was the second day when the weather has been a concern. We had been receiving reports of severe weather conditions approaching since the previous night, and though the weather looked bright and sunny in the morning, we could see a substantial storm system approaching in the distance. The weather looked so threatening that one of the media visitors we were expecting canceled, and another decided to leave in the late morning rather than risk being trapped by the weather. Knowing what the conditions were like in the wet here, I was apprehensive about having an EVA team out in the field. But we had work to do, and not much time left in which to do it. We also had our media visitors who were expecting some opportunities to take some photographs. So I gathered my geologist, geophysicist and most experienced EVA commander and had them plan a route to one of the areas that we still had on our agenda. I gave them instructions to keep an eye on the storm system, and return at the first sign of the weather closing in.

I keep an eye on the weather from the hab from the moment they left, and it varied from moment to moment, with periods where the clouds broke and the sun shone through, and others where the wind howled and rocked the hab, and the clouds darkened to the point where we almost needed to turn on the lights in the hab. But the feared storm passed us by, and we never had to deal with either rain or snow.

Today we were lucky. We even had the clouds break and give us a brief period of sunshine just after the EVA had returned to the hab, providing an opportunity for our remaining media visitor to obtain some hoped for pictures of the EVA team doing some work in the area around the hab.

On reentering the hab, the EVA team related how the wind had whipped up a dust storm worthy of the red planet itself, and that at times they were having to lean into the wind in order to make headway. As they were un-suiting in the EVA room, the dust and dirt that fell from inside their suits was testament to the conditions.

We bid farewell to the last of our visitors at around 16:00, happy that we were able to provide them with the material they wanted, and also achieve our own objectives. Another successful day on Mars.