The moment I sent out the HSO report yesterday about the absence of Hobo spiders, another specimen crawled across in the command deck. Furtunately, we found a can of anti-spider spray, which we intend to use in cracks and potential hiding areas.

Otherwise, we commenced the first "Track and Trace" experiment during EVA 11 dealing with the forward and backward contamination issue which turns out to become a more and more serious discussion topic in the scientific community. That meant actually "making our hands dirty", to be more precise, squeezing two analog astronauts into two mylar-foil based suits which were applied over the existing suits.

It has been a major concern, that the thermal regulation of the subjects bodies might fail, so the original plan was to monitor the body core temperature. Due to a technical glitch in the hardware, this equipment was not available. As we were also using the Draeger Phase Change Material vests, and we were conducting the EVA in close range to the Hab, were monitoring the Heart rates and made sure, the crew was properly hydrated.

Surprisingly, both test persons, the XO and the FE were fairly happy with the thermal properties, it was even hotter with the suits inside the hab than it was outside, so no problem. At this point I should say a big thank you to Austrian Aerospace which generously provided us with the space-qualified thermal layer protective sheets which comprised the outermost layer of the BioMars suit and did their part in preventing us from a heat stroke.

Healthwise there were no major incidences to report. We all feel the lack of sleep these days and so we are logically very pleased that Mission Control has allocated another hour of extra sleep to our tight and cramped flight plans (which, since yesterday, has inofficially been dubbed as "flight plan") to at least after 5 days of tedious work, we get the chance for a luxurious 8 hours sleep.

Good night to Earth.