Today the commander and the first officer guarded the hab whilst the rest of the crew roamed freely through the plains of Mars. That gave her time to reflect upon the morning's events - 'saving' Aouda.X (the sister Martian landing party) space suit operator from a comms failure during an experiment on the other side of Mars. MDRS saved the day by taking over comms and control of the sampling with the help of Wellington Mission Control (in Mars's orbit) until the Austrian crew (also in Mars's Orbit) fixed their systems. This scenario was designed by the two commanders of the two expeditions, Gernot Groemer and Haritina Mogosanu (both MDRS veterans) a few months ago before their ships reached Mars. It was a world first with regards with communications between analogue missions to Mars. The experiment was a success (despite the 'equipment failure') unlike Antipodes 1 and Antipodes 2 where real network failure happened in the caves of Dachstein. At least we managed to have a live interview from MDRS with the media in Austria (Antipodes 0) - which almost cost us the bandwidth for the day but it was worth it!

More details about the extent of the entire Dachstein Operation you can find in here: http://blog.oewf.org/en/ (and BTW Aouda is the Indian princess from "around the Earth in 80 days"!).

I was pondering, it felt great to be Mission Control, to talk directly with the suit operator of Aouda.X and give real time commands over internet into a cave in Austria. An extraordinary chance I would not have had, had I not been at MDRS last year. A hub that connects people across cultures, MDRS is also an embassy advancing science in the most enticing and inspiring way.

With so many early morning Antipodes missions the Commander of Crew 118 had lots of chances lately to admire the stars early in the morning.

The stars...

There is an amazing telescope at MDRS called C-14 but that's not because it dates from immemorial times like everything else around here. It's actually a top notch telescope in its range, at the verge of professional (perfect for back-yard science) and yet a very accesible and easy to operate jewel. And through it "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, attack ships on fire over the shoulder of Orion..." (as majestically Blade Runner tells the story!). And you know, "all these moments could have been lost in time... like tears in rain" if it were not for the ST8300 new camera attached to it (also top notch). I am telling you, this telescope is a dream for any crew astronomer! And why not taking astronomy to Mars? Outpost for searching asteroids, radio silence, reduced light pollution... and the list can continue or ... simply carry on inspiring generations to look at the stars and imagine (with or without the camera - forgive the pun). Looking at Albireo. Navigate by the stars. Building solar dials that tell the story of the equation of time! Don't start me!

But talking about time... time stops here. I am sure all you connaisseurs agree that being at MDRS feels like a spatio-temporal bubble from where you go back in time millions of years. Protected by the rovers, the suits and inspired by some of the most passionate geologists I encountered - my MSPS amongst them, watched over by outstanding world-class specialists, we looked at rocks, observed them, learnt from them. And at night we lifted our sight to the stars wondering... The awe in the eyes of my crew when they saw Mars (oh yeah!) and Saturn (oh my God!) a couple of days ago in our first clear night, they looked at the Moon and observed their first globular cluster in the shape of M13... These moments they say will stay with them forever! As for me, happy to have successfully installed the secondary telescope onto the C-14, sort out the balancing issue by adding a couple of dumbbell weights taken from the 'gym' equipment, I declared the first light as being a girl - planet Venus. Happy to further entertain my team I reached for my green laser and found stones. It just occurred to me then and there:

We had stones in all our pockets and stars in our eyes and we knew they were one and the same together with us! And that's what this place is making of you.

Long live MDRS!

Ad Ares!

Haritina Mogosanu
Commander KiwiMars 2012 (Crew 118 MDRS)