The day started out with two great successes right after breakfast: Kyle managed to hook up the weather station to the hab computer, a task that several previous crews had tried in vain to accomplish. And Rebecca and Heidi found that all GreenHab tanks as well as the toilet flush tank were at their nominal levels, thus validating the outcome of our extensive GreenHab repairs yesterday. Levels stayed nominal all day – looks like we finally made it work. The crew was elated, and none more so than yours truly. We really have a top-notch team of jack(et)s-of-all-trades here at the hab, and I am glad that Crew 37 is making Ma Tech proud.

But even more was accomplished this morning, though we had planned today to be a "slow" day: Doug refinished the secondary airlock so it now closes right, and he also added insulating foam and an internal locking bolt (fashioned from a huge nail he found) to keep it closed when needed. Heidi drafted a resupply list for Crew 38, and Rebecca connected a data logger to the newly installed water meter, so from now on we should have minute-by-minute water consumption records. I busied myself with updating the waypoint database and forwarding some navigation-related tasks to our Mission Support Center, while Kyle and John started working on the balloon experiment. Throughout all this, the crew was in great spirits and obviously inspired by their accomplishments.

For lunch, we had eggs on top of our excellent home-baked bread. Afterwards, we rewarded ourselves with a few hours off for an afternoon nap. Thereafter, we set up the gear for the balloon research project and tested the robot climber for the first time, after adding a Buzz mascot as an appropriate additional "payload". We took some fun video of this activity, which we will upload to the website as soon as we can. As the video will show, we still need to tweak the ‘bot a bit tomorrow, but we are confident we'll be ready in time for our first "launch" on Monday.

Soon we will enjoy a spaghetti dinner before watching another movie, either "Contact" or "Dune". And we still have to prepare the Easter eggs for tomorrow :-)

Happy Easter,

Jan Osburg
Commander, MDRS Crew 37