After eating a Denny’s breakfast next to our Grand Junction hotel, our Crew Artist, Crew Health and Safety Officer, Crew Engineer, and Crew Journalist piled into the Chevy Suburban and started our journey to the MDRS. After a quick stop for Terran energy drinks for two crewmembers, we drove on and eventually made it to Utah—stopping to take some pictures of the Welcome to Utah sign at the suggestion of our Commander. The turn onto Cow Dung Road instantly nudged our perspective toward Mars: the vegetation seemed to fade, and the geological plane rose up, cut a new horizon, and faded into pale, sandy white and iron red.
We arrived at the MDRS and found our Crew Commander, who had arrived earlier in his RV, on the upper deck in his flight suit. After our first moment together in person, we used velcro to decorate our flight suits with the patches designed by our Crew Artist. Then we began our afternoon of training—a long stretch during a beautiful cloudless day, one in which the sun lit up the campus’s white buildings. We watered the GreenHab plants together and got familiar with the baffling acoustics of the Science Dome. Our practice EVA took us onto the rovers and out to the site we’ll visit tomorrow in-sim, and we stopped to look at a dramatic nearby dinosaur femur fossil. (And while one rover isn’t usable, the rest were smooth.) The practice EVA ended with an unexpected visit from a sprinter van driver named Bob who was visiting from Saint George. We took advantage of being able to talk to him before going into sim.
Our Crew Artist volunteered first for dinner. While he cooked farfalle with a spiced tomato sauce, our GreenHab officer (me) familiarized herself with the watering cans, and we experienced some power shutdowns and restarts, due the hab’s furnace not accepting the auxiliary generator’s power properly. We don’t know the nature of the furnace problem, though things should be alright in the balmy weather. Now, having written our bios and sent our first reports, we’ll head out to stargaze before crashing after a tiring day.