Today we discovered a hidden passenger who made it all the way from Earth: right after the morning briefing, our MSP discovered a small spider crawling over the table of the command deck, followed by a second companion. We took images and relayed the images to medical control, as there is a potential danger in encounters with Hobo spiders.

Our Flight surgeons took a look at the images and consulted a spider specialist in Graz and we got a confirmation that it is indeed the venomenous Hobo specimen. We are a little bit concerned, as both spiders were fairly young, which might indicate a nest somewhere in the Hab. Medical Control issued procedures how to deal with these bites and we are very happy that -just in case- we have the standard treatment options for anaphylactic cases in our medical cabinet.

Otherwise the crew is doing fine; the heart rate monitors have turned out to be a very interesting add-on to the monitoring of EVA activities, although we found out that the calorie readings derived from the weight and heart rate of the analogue-astronaut are not reliable during the time in the airlock, which is at least 10 minutes for the cycling of the decompression chamber both ways each, as the receivers are not coded and, as such, are interfering with each other. Hence it was determined my medical control that the measurements shall be started as soon as the EVA crew has cleared the outer hatch.

Another issue is that due to a misunderstanding we discovered that some of the food which was supposed to arrive in Hanksville actually stayed back on Earth. So we had to make an inventory of what we have, straight away. Our dietology team will re-assess the situation. Fortunately there is so much food left from previous crews which we originally decided to ignore but now consider it as "emergency rations". We are looking forward to the new menu plan, in the meantime we go with what we have.