Commander Report
04/17/2013
Liz Mitchell
Today, the crew had cereal and more homemade cinnamon rolls (courtesy of James).
The first crew left on EVA 1. They collected more samples for
Santiago's research and samples for
the group chemistry EVA. Brad, Santiago, and James went on this EVA.
They were out from 9:30 -
1:00 PM.
While they were out, Jennifer and Kyle worked on their research projects.
At around 10:30 AM, the reporter from KSL (Steven) came out and
interviewed Jennifer, James, and
myself. Questions centered on what MDRS is, why we are here, our
research, and what life is like on
Mars. He was very interested and happy to be here.
In order to promote MDRS, The Mars Society, and to give him a "taste
of Mars", we suited Steven up.
He was very excited to suit up and to go outside and walk around. He
also rode the ATV to the end
of the Hab road and back (approximately 3 minutes), to see how
difficult analog research is. He
came back very excited, and expressed an interest to participate in a
future crew himself. We gave
him the Mars Society's website.
He left around 12:30 PM.
The EVA 1 crew arrived and we had lunch together of soup and bread.
After lunch, we had 2 hours of
"do whatever you want" time, as several crew members were starting to
feel the beginnings of being
very tired. Everyone is in good health and spirits, and we want to
keep it that way.
At 4:30, everyone came back together. Team members continued working
on projects and writing some
new labs for future crew mates.
We did not go on an EVA this afternoon, due to precipitation. It is
currently snowing fairly hard
outside, although the snow is not sticking to the ground.
Problems:
None to report
Plans for tomorrow:
Tomorrow is a "free day" for everyone to start wrapping up their
projects and to have some long
stretches of time to work only on their projects.
We have some microbial growth on the microbiology lab. We will assess
those samples tomorrow, as well.
Weather depending, we may send out one or two EVA groups (report plans
to come), depending on
everyone's needs.