FMARS Mission Support Summary - Monday, July 09th, 2001

The second official FMARS communication session took place today. It is unclear at this time if the field team is still using the backup comm system or if the official system is operational. No comms have been received during the shift or during the 2.5 hours extra the mission support staff stayed afterwards

Brian Orlotti and Judith Lapierre have organized the Outlook Express folder structure being used to store email. The number of folder categories was reduced to ten, which were further divided into rotations. Individual dates were eliminated to simplify archiving.

The mission control email dating scheme has been modified to include more descriptive information as well as to aid archiving. Season date as well as rotation number have been added to the subject line descriptor.

At approx. 9PM MDT, mission control received an email from Robert Zubrin, requesting the purchase of a new 5.5 kWe electric generator to replace one that had malfunctioned at FMARS. Mission support leapt into action, conducting an exhaustive web search for generator manufacturers/dealers. Tony Muscatello, Dewey Anderson, and Brian Orlotti searched a broad swath of sites, and called several suppliers. Leads were found, but they could only be followed during normal business hours the next day.

Mission Support will resume at 3PM MDT Tuesday July 10th

Brian Orlotti
Journalist
FMARS Mission Support