We are still taking the 1000 mg of Vitamin C to prevent us from catching a cold as directed by medical control. The crew seems to get used fairly well to the plethora of test batteries such as getting blood pressure, body water content, weight, body fat content and all the psychological tests including the saliva sampling, the neurological batteries testing for alertness with three tests ranging from CogHealth from the Univ. of Texas at Galveston, the Fatigue Monitoring System of the Object Tracker company and the Pupillomyograph tests from the University of Innsbruck.

In addition, our Mission Specialist Life Sciences, Markus Spiss, has cultivated various agar cultures from spots within the hab including the glovebox, the toilet facilities, the command deck, laboratory areas as well as specified spots on the bodies of each crew member. Pretty much any spot showed microbiological activity, so we took pure cultures and grew them for 72 hours. The samples will be frozen and later be analyzed in the home laboratories in our base institutions.

Otherwise, the crew is doing very well; the continued EVA's put quite a physical load on each of us, resulting in minor back pain, as the analogue-suits do not allow for movements releasing some tension from the muscles like with ordinary hiking backpacks. One more thing on a side note: obviously the Hab is not really built for people of our size, especially as one of our crewmembers who prefers to stay anonmyous (it is the Commander, remark of author :)), bumped his head at the stairwell ceiling between the laboratory and command deck (well and other places as well.. he states, he's used to it.).

No traces of Hobo spiders, by the way, so I guess (or better: I hope), these two were in only ones in the close vicinity.

Signing off, yours truly

Gernot Gröemer, HSO