Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who
produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
Aristotle

F.L.A.M.E. is a study designed to comply with directives for the future of human exploration and settlement to the Moon, Mars and beyond in order to examine the concepts, capabilities and technologies humans will require in order to secure space in the future. Produced in an academic and analogue environment the F.L.A.M.E. have hopes of advancing capabilities related to exploration and settlement. The Family Living Analysis on Mars Expedition (F.L.A.M.E) crew have developed protocols for implementing the Vision for Space Exploration and fully understand that the data derived from these missions will be used as reference missions for future exploration and settlement by engaging all the sectors and the general public by promoting the benefits of human space exploration and settlement and by recommending solutions to issues that deserve serious attention.

With the challenges of planetary missions this produces opportunities to study constraints in mission design, operations, planning and mission support along with technological advancement in the field as well as within the habitats themselves. Analogue stations provide a low cost-risk scenario where situational awareness can be maximized and illustrated. The goals of F.L.A.M.E. are to produce results illustrating the following:

• Mission timeline and purpose
• Mission infrastructure
• Mission communications and command
• Mission task management
• Technological utilization and advancement in the field
• Mission support capabilities
• Educational outreach

One of the goals during this F.L.A.M.E. mission is to determine the sleep patterns of the crew and mission control while living a Mars Sol. The exact length of a Sol changes slightly based on the season, therefore, we will estimate the Sol to be approximately 24 hours and 39 minutes long (the same assumption made during the MER mission). The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) crew bed times and wake up times will be scheduled to occur 39 minutes later each day, thus day one bedtime will be 10pm and day two at 10:39 pm (see Table 1 for example bedtimes and wake times). In reality, emergencies will always take precedence over scheduled sleep times.

Wake Up Time	Rack Time
0600	2226
0639	2305
0718	2344
0757	0023
0836	0102
0915	0141

Table 1: Example of a sleep schedule while living on Mars

While living on Mars, humans will need to become entrained to a Mars Sol, which is approximately 39 minutes longer than an Earth day. Isolation studies have shown that the endogenous circadian rhythm is on average 24.2h long; however, sunlight on Earth entrains the circadian rhythm to be closer to 24 hours (Czeisler et al., 1999). We are proposing to examine humans' sleep/wake cycles while living under Mars Sol conditions. This activity data would be used to estimate sleep and would allow us to begin to understand the following issues:

• How much sleep can humans obtain while shifting their bedtimes and awakenings 39 minutes daily?
• Can humans get the same amount of sleep while living a Mars Sol compared to an Earth day?
• Does sleep efficiency (percentage of time actually slept during the time in bed) change from an Earth day compared to a Mars Sol?

Czeisler, C. A., Duffy, J. F., Shanahan, T. L., Brown, E. N., Mitchell, J. F., Rimmer, D. W. et al. (1999). Stability, precision, and near-24-hour period of the human circadian pacemaker. Science, 284, 2177-2181.

This study will provide insight into the ability of humans to sleep on a Mars Sol sleep/wake schedule with minimum exposure to the Earth lighting conditions and social obligations. This crew is also unique in that the crew will consist of children (ages between 9 to 13 years old) and adults. Therefore, the sleep patterns between them will be investigated. Additionally, this study may provide insight into the sleep disruptions occurring for mission control in supporting a Mars Sol operation. It is important to remember that although the MDRS crew will live a Mars Sol, they will always need to interface with mission control, who will be Earth bound.

As for today, early in the morning we went to Tank Wash again in our PEV (Pressurized Extravehicular Vehicle) and showed the F.L.A.M.E. students how to use a GPS and how to collect samples at and near fluvial regimes to determine any change detection in the amount of water found near these regimes at different seasons of the year. We then took an "Out of SIM EVA" in order to treat the F.L.A.M.E. students to Goblin Valley which depicts fluvial and aeolian dynamics which have shaped the landscape for millions of years. The children were able to study the geologic features and observe the wonders of geology.

We returned to the Hab later in the evening and started to make dinner right away. Tonight was Italian night! We had pasta with sauce, meatballs, salad and garlic bread. The chldren have been terrific with helping making dinner and cleaning up afterwards. Tonight will be movie night so we are going to camp out again on the galley floor and watch "Galaxy Quest" which was filmed at Goblin Valley. This will give the F.L.A.M.E. students the sense of familiarity and test their skills at finding the geologic indexes which would aid them in finding out where exactly at Goblin Valley the movie was filmed.

We are ending our first week on Mars tomorrow. The time has flown by so quickly but we still have so much to do!

Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto
Commander, MDRS Crew 59