Graham and Morgan started their day at 6:30 am to refuel the generator.
They continued their morning with a hike up to the ridge west of the
Hab to watch a spectacular setting of the Moon over Factory Butte and
the rising of the Sun. Pancakes were had by all for breakfast
compliments of gallant Graham.

Graham spent a good part of his morning relaying information to Mission
Support including an inventory of the science shipment we recently
received. He also sent a lengthy description of engineering issues we
are having within GreenHab.

Debi-Lee tried a new approach to recharging our battery bank and they
now appear to be holding their charge. Later tonight we'll be testing
to see if the inverter can maintain this charge. Debi-Lee has also been
working on writing up the objectives for our mission.

Luis and Chris feverishly persevered in their attempts to get potable
water flowing into the Hab. Still suspecting the pipe that leads
directly out of the water supply into the ground, they dug about a foot
down around it and removed ice buildup, insulation and replaced a bad
PVC elbow joint. Debi-Lee covered some of the water lines with black
plastic to try and raise their temperature. We retested the pump to no
avail. Result: crew 65 worked together to manually fill our 55 gallon
potable water tank in record time.

Mike and Debi-Lee carried on their work to set up the observatory. They
attempted to hook up the dome controller but an infrared LED in the
assembly appears to be fried and needs to be replaced. They cleaned-up
and performed general maintenance in the observatory. The next step is
to program the automated tracking software and to hook up the digital
camera to the telescope. Tomorrow our resident astronomers will begin
their search for near earth asteroids with limited dome control.

Chris spent his afternoon preparing for the terrain slope experiment.
He selected and measured the actual slope for the 15 locations he'll be
using. Chris also completed construction of a portable sundial. By
measuring the direction and length of the sun's shadow he can calculate
the azimuth and elevation of the sun.

Morgan worked in GreenHab to reinforce a severely cracked 2x4 support
with angled steel. He began germinating a new crop of radish, carrots
and lettuce. Morgan interviewed Mike about his MDRS experience and
learned why astronauts traveling to Mars should officially be renamed
"lucky bastards".

In the afternoon Graham pumped our grey water into GreenHab and took a
long ATV ride with Luis to scout possible locations for our mission
research projects. Graham discovered martian cow dung which we plan to
harvest for our compost in a future EVA mission once we go into Sim.

Chris is whipping up a taco dinner as I write this.

At 7 pm tonight we officially entered simulation!!! We are now on Mars.

p.s. Here are a few additional notes from last night (after the
journalist report was submitted). It was a full moon last night and we
spent some time after dinner in the observatory. The full moon made the
sky very bright and therefore less than ideal conditions for astronomy.
However we still got fantastic views of Mars, Saturn, the Moon and
Orion’s Nebula.

Afterwards we celebrated Luis’ 27th b-day with chocolate chip Betty
Crocker cupcakes!!