Commander's Report

February 7, 2008

John Thaler



Today began frantically, but quickly relaxed back into a gentle schedule. It began with the almost complete failure of the generator, which had been leaking oil at a prodigious rate. We were relieved by the arrival of "The Don" at breakfast who took Perry, our Chief Engineer, on a resupply mission to Price to return the broken generator and return with a new functional one. Losing our power-generating source until they returned, we switched to power conservation mode but still quickly lost all power since the battery bank doesn't hold charge for long. Since we still had gas and the suits were powered up we were still able to send out Kerry and Mic on an EVA to scout sites for soil gas analysis and perform validation tests on the equipment and protocols. Their marathon EVA lasted 3.25 hours, our longest EVA yet this mission. The remaining crew assisted Nasim in general GreenHab maintenance and cleaning and then set to work cleaning the Hab to welcome our media guests tomorrow. During a short coffee break we played an exciting quick game of "Dutch Blitz". After a lunch of Chili Mac with Beef, we conducted an EVA to clean up the area surrounding the Hab and performed routine operations and corrective maintenance on several systems. The inside and outside of the Hab is now thoroughly clean. With the return of power, we are now able to turn our attention to some of the less critical maintenance projects found around the Hab.

Last night's FDM seminar was postponed, first because the crew needed rest and then later when the generator began to fail, so it will now take place tonight after supper. The schedule for the remaining lecture series has been finalized and the crew is looking forward to learning from each other.

Tomorrow the crew will put into practice the FDM principles on an exploratory EVA. Kerry will continue his geology EVAs while John and Cheryl both await the arrival of key supplies so they can start their projects.

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