Commander's Report

February 8, 2008

John Thaler



Today we had some interplanetary visitors. A Japanese film crew is
here to film a documentary about women and men in space. I woke up at
6:00 am to greet them, but they weren't here yet so I unlocked the
engineering airlock door so they could get in and went back to bed.
When we all awoke at 8:00 am they had finished taking footage of the
sunrise behind the Hab and we let them in and gave them a grand tour.
Our morning activities were captured by a fisheye lens mounted to the
roof of the Hab and our lunchtime meeting was also caught on camera but
it wasn't too hard to ignore the lens because we're continuously on
screen with the webcams anyway. After lunch Perry and Cheryl got to
star in the documentary by suiting up and showing off their ATV driving
skills. Following their film debuts they joined Anna and Nasim to go
to Phobos Peak and along the way they practiced Field Documentation
Methodology (FDM) which the crew learned last night. The engineers
spent the day troubleshooting the ATV and successfully got it running
again. While Mic and I were changing the oil on the Green Monster ATV
the Japanese film crew returned for a flyover with their helicopter.
It was dramatic.

Tonight the lecture series continues with Perry's presentation about
COM DEV. Perhaps we'll be able to squeeze in a social activity since
systems are now operating normally and haven't given us any major
problems.

Tomorrow we have been requested to wake up early and pose in our EVA
suits on the observatory ridge for another flyover by the Japanese film
crew. We will conduct another FDM training EVA in the morning which
will also be aerially filmed by the Japanese. In the afternoon Kerry
will begin his complete data collection since his equipment has been
fully validated.