Written by: Aster Stein.

The am-EVA team made an interesting discovery today. After a short
drive, an innocent hike to a high peak in the North Pinto Hills. It
went very well, but near the top of the hill they found a bone
sticking out from the ground. It must have been there for a while
since the bone was pretty clean. It looked like a femur from a medium
sized mammal.

Nicky and Aster started recording a series of fun physics experiments
in front of the hab. It is their sincere hope that the future first
man on Mars was inspired by our adventures and demonstrations. One of
them involved a 60 foot long black ‘solar tube’, a huge plastic bag
that will start lifting up in the air when the sun heats it enough.

Out pm-EVA crew visited a little gem, almost in our backyard, Candor
Chasma. It’s a short ATV ride away, followed by an easy hike. This
could surely be a target for the very last EVA’s of crew 109’s
rotation so that everyone has seen it.

In keeping up with hab tradition, Aster made door labels for all the
crew members to hang on their bedroom doors. Hanging the labels was a
special moment, because crew 109 is almost a part of history now.

Crew 110 should verify this, but If one would write down the first
letter of each previous crew’s labels from the green door on a sheet
of paper, we arranged them so that it would look like…

Striking layered walls
Candor Chasma tells tales of
Jurassic splendor

Written by: Aster Stein.

The final stretch of crew 109’s stay at the MDRS is well under way. The biology team has finished their research on bacteria growth and tomorrow David will collect his last sample for his geology work. Nicky has spotted the first small green leaves in his plant growing project. Engineer Leandro has fine tuned his robot and succeeded making it pick up small rocks. And Aster will start recording his science experiments for educational use tomorrow and friday.

The food study is also coming to an end shortly. Tonight was our last pre-prepaired cooking day. So the “add water and heat up” days are over. We have conserved some interesting food supplies which can be put to use during these last days. There are rumors of chocolate mousse and latkes going around…

Before we say goodbye to the hab and eachother, there is still work to be done though. Like having David write daily haiku’s:

Space plants hide in soil
Eating dirt not nutritious
Bacteria smells.