Day 0

Decided to start this blog to document my second stay at Mars Desert Research Station. The Pennyslvania Space Grant Consortium sponsored both Eric and I for this rotation in hopes we could send reports of our stay to encourage NASA to provide more funding for similar student missions. Needless to say, we are extremely grateful. So here we go...

Arrived here in Hanksville yesterday about noon and ventured into the desert. Off-roaded to Mars Desert Research Station in our Toyota Sequoia, windows down and blasting "Let it Rock." Smiles all around. Unpacked our mass of personal equipment next to the Hab and knocked on the door to meet Crew 92, the past 6 astronauts to spend two weeks at the station. After saying hello, since Billy and I had previously been here, we went ahead and went to town to pick up shelf stable food (yuck) while the others became familiar with the hab and our processes. Crew 92, a batch of men and women from the French Air Force, bid farewell, took the car and abandoned us in the desert.

Grabbed our things and headed upstairs to our home for the next 14 days. Fought over the "warmest" rooms, and I ended up in my beloved room from last year that the crew engineer usually stays in, since it is close to the stairs. We have heard that the generators this year are fairly reliable and Chris, the crew engineer, should have much less trouble this year than I had in the past. I will miss the middle of the night adventures to restore power to the hab. He still chose a room close to the stairs...although the space is so tiny, we all are a 5 second sprint to the downstairs lab area. After unpacking, we grabbed a quick bite to eat- leftovers from Applebees, as we are not in sim yet.

Ventured outside to the beloved ATV's. ATV training went well...I always forget how much fun they are out on this terrain...and a little nerve wracking. After Dan, Billy and I got the new members of the crew acquainted with all the equipment out here, we went on a quest to find the dinosaur bones. Apparently the site is is "hush hush" as excavation has not started, and we weren't sent any GPS coordinates- just told they would be found between two well known peaks ("Big Daddy" and Phobos). After three hours of hiking, we still had not found a thing and decided to call it a day. I cooked the crew dinner and we watched the sun set. The stars are incredible out here. We went to bed around 9, as we were all exhausted after the trip from grand junction, crew handover, and hiking.

Not sure why our report page is not up at this time, but you can watch us on the webcams here: http://www.freemars.org/mdrscam/.
Will introduce the crew and our research in the next few posts.

Off to another beautiful day in the desert!

Yours,

Jillian
XO- Crew 93