![]() With a growing interest in space and the overload of information on the internet, visitors are far more frequent at MDRS than in the past. All of these are things that have happened in the last few months at our station in southern Utah. What hinders that effort are drones filming crew members from outside their windows, or people wandering around the facility, poking their heads in buildings or sitting on the hill just outside the front airlock before daybreak. Crews can accomplish this, but not with constant outside interference. Making this Mars simulation as realistic as possible is key to that research. Imagine if someone did that in your own backyard. He's proud of his work, and thinks nothing of sharing how he trespassed on private land, photographed an entire field station without permission and stayed onsite while I slept a few meters away, unaware of this violation. In the email, the photographer gives details of his long-duration exposures and how he lit up the station during the night I just described, and spent hours photographing the night sky. Attached is a photo of MDRS, all lit up, with the night sky emblazoned above it. Months later, our director of public relations receives an email. While I struggle to make sense of it, my dogs quiet down, so I drift back to sleep, thinking I hadn't noticed the moon was full. I look out the small window of my bedroom, which is separated from the station by two hills, and I can see what appears to be bright light shining on one of the buildings. After a particularly hard day of working on repairs to the water system, I'm awakened in the night by my dogs barking. After a year-long shutdown in operations due to COVID, I'm back at the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), where I serve as director, preparing to welcome two U.S.-based crews to the facility. It's early spring in the southern Utah desert. ![]()
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