Another busy day here at MDRS for Crew 173. While Idriss continued to work on his 3D printed bricks, Richard beavered away in the GreenHab as well as baking biscuits, bread and preparing dinner for tonight. Its Australia day and he’s hosting our ultimate Culture night. He already served us ‘Vege-mite’ for breakfast this morning, so who knows whats up for dinner. By the way, for the uninitiated, ‘Vegemite’ is a sandwich spread made from yeast extract. Its a savoury spread and the flavour is hard to describe, except to say that you usually either love it or hate it. Personally I love it, but not so much for Roy! He hadn’t tried it before, and assuming that since the spread was brown it was some sort of sweet-tasting chocolate spread. Hmmm. It took his taste buds a few seconds to catch up & once they did, his face said it all!

I joined Michaela and Roy on a geo-biological EVA to the Butte. It was our longest EVA but certainly worth it. The views of the basin and surrounding environs around MDRS were absolutely stunning. I think I took about 600 pictures! Not enough- I could have taken a thousand more!

And now the sun has gone down and Sol 11 is almost over. Just one more full day here on our own before we are joined by Crew 174.  Its starting to feel like we’re not going to get everything done. I’m sure the next couple of days will be special for us all as we spend our last few hours here together. What a buzz!

by Niamh Shaw

Crew Journalist & Artist.