Last night, we watched "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". It is now
a norm for us to watch a space movie every night before we sleep.

We ran out of water earlier than expected. The ground tank has some
water, but the pump inside requires higher water level to pump to the
Hab, and the pump in the trailer water tank to refill the ground tank
was not working. There were many dishes to be washed and we wanted
to shower, so the first task is to pump water from the trailer tank to the
ground tank. We have tried siphoning, which actually became sucking air
by mouth from a long tube and hoping when we tasted the sandy water, it
would continue to flow to a lower level. Nothing succeeded. We tried to
use a bucket to transport water, but either the bucket was too big to
drop into the mouth of the tank, or a small bucket would take forever
to do the job. The malfunctioning pump was brought to the Hab, taken
apart and fixed. The water tube was a bit leaky but the pumping worked.
Time to take a nice hot shower.

The diesel from Wendy was clearly leaking and the tray we put beneath
it got quite wet. We followed the advice to switch the fuel intake to a
small tank in Wendy to bypass the leaking lines, though it requires
manual refill within every 8 hours. Wendy should be fixed or
replaced since it is so worn out and dirty, and polluting the air on
Mars. In case of the danger posed by the fuel leak, our earth return
vehicle was moved from the engineering area to the Hab road among some
hills.

Meanwhile, science proceeded as much as engineering. The collected
samples have continued to be tested and cultured in the laboratory.
Hopefully, we are able to grow some halophiles.

Some of us need to make phone calls for flight and car. We saved the
hassle of going to Hanksville by climbing up to the top of the steep
hill on the west. We could get 1 to 2 "bars" of cell phone signal and
spectacular view of Mars including Skyline Rim and snowy mountains at
the remote horizon. Future crews now have a way to make emergency calls
in MDRS. We are envisioning Internet to Hanksville, cell phone placing
there but making calls in hab, or even a cell phone signal amplifier
there, too.

We had an EVA in the afternoon to continue to collect potential
halophile soil samples. All necessary data were collected on site. A
helmet was repaired.

Dishes and utensils piled up were all washed. The Hab was clean again.