Day 2 of our 3 day in simulation period saw us conduct a number of interesting activities today. The morning began as it does every other morning with the usual refueling of the generator at 0700. Today however, Edwin was not able to get the main generator started so he had to start up the back-up generator, which he managed to get going but with some difficulty. We had the day before run into generator issues but had overcome them with the assistance of local mission support. As we were now running off of the backup generator, we had to be cautious of our power usage so we made sure those power hungry items that we did use were used at different times.

The morning unfolded as per normal with morning routines conducted until around 0930 and then a morning brief from 0930 until 1000. After I finished my section and received updates of the various hab sub-systems, Jamon (EVA Commander) gave us a brief on the morning EVA, to be conducted by himself, Edwin and Richard.

This EVA saw them go out to some of the various steep cliffs and valleys they had seen the previous day and deploy Edwin's prototype rover for a second time. There was talk of working on a crank that fit onto the back of an ATV to assist with the deployment, but at this stage, Edwin continues to deploy the rover over the side of the cliff using a hand operated tether.

While not on the EVA, I took the opportunity to further rationalise some of the folders containing various snippets of information from previous crews, papers and numerous maps into a central file repository. This greatly saved on space and kept everything in a central location. The crew is using this theme of rationalisation throughout the whole hab and throughout our stay here as there is so much equipment lying around in various places around the hab. Sometimes new pieces of equipment have been ordered, because the crew had not known that 2 items of the same equipment lie in another location in the hab.

After lunch and a break Richard and Edwin got back up for another EVA and it was my turn to have an EVA for today. Just before we went out the backup generator had been refueled, but we hadn't been able to get it going for a while. Unlike before where we went straight to mission support, I thought it would be better if we tried to solve the problem ourselves, so I asked the crew to continue in sim and we went out on our EVA. The goal of this one was to take some plant seed out to a remote location and plant them there. The idea would be to come back periodically and check whether the plants could grow in the 'Martian' soil. After leaving at 1730, it took about 40 minutes for us to get to the site, utilising a combination of topographical maps and GPS (only as a backup resort). We did not stay long as it would begin to get dark and we did not want to be stuck out in the desert at night without food or shelter. We ran into a bit of trouble when one of the ATVs got stuck in a crevasse, but we were quickly able to pull it out and be on our way. We arrived back at the hab at around 1855 just as the last rays of sunlight were retreating behind the hills.

After dinner everyone was very tired and ready to sit back for a bit of a break. Richard had gone outside to refill the generator but could not get it back up and going again. He said that both generators ignitions were not engaging and that we should perhaps call mission support. The only way to contact mission support is through a computer. The computers rely on a server connection to go through the internet but the servers had no power at all so there wasn't anyway to contact anyone. We then thought that maybe we could use the Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) backup battery to provide power to the sever and laptop so that we could send a message to mission support of our status and also copy our local mission support just in case our battery went out and we weren't able to get contact with anyone again. While I was contacting mission support, I asked other members of the crew to sit down with a torch and go through the generator handbooks. Richard and Jamon seemed to think that the started motor battery had gone dead and that if we hooked up another one, we might be able to get it running again. After looking through the manuals, there was nothing there on trying to jump start the generator.

I then went out to the generator with Jamon and Richard and asked them to take me through the starting procedure for both generators. After trying both of them myself and failing to get them started, I suggested that perhaps we may want to start the primary generator with the alternate cable pull hand crank. We had previously pulled the handle off of the hand crank in a prior attempt at starting it and the cable had wrapped back inside the cable housing. We decided to take this off and then rethread the cable through the handle. It was now 1240 in the evening and everyone was starting to get tired. We tried for at least 20 minutes but eventually Jamon was able to get the main generator started.

As were walking back to the hab I thought how excited I was by our crew's accomplishment. OK, it wasn't a great technical feat that we had performed but rather we had sat back and thought about the situation logically, tried a few different methods to solving the problem and finally came up with a solution that worked. To me, that was a very rewarding and satisfying experience to have gone through.