I was struggling. I had not felt gravity in six months. My body hardly knew what to do. Nothing worked as well as it should have, with my body I mean, and I was actually kind of worried about getting out of the Rover. Those moon guys didn't spend six months in zero gravity before they landed -- I was the first to go through this. But of course, I had such an incredible amount of adrenaline. I WAS on MARS! It was the coolest thing anybody had ever done, and I took a couple of moments to think about that before getting back to my job as a scientist.

I stepped out. It was red, rocky, and sandy, too. In other words, just like I expected, and a lot like the training facility in Nevada. But it felt so completely different. My senses were operating at a level I had never known before. Everything -- every rock, every speck of dust, the mountains in the distance, the stars above my head, the two moons -- I stared at it all. I don't think I moved for the first fifteen minutes. I totally...

I took a few steps. The sandy ground was soft, the rocks jagged. I bounced a bit. The gravity isn't much there. It was a lot for me, and I was fascinated, bouncing around like a little kid. I had a tool that I could use to pick up rocks, so I didn't risk a cut on my spacesuit, and I just started gathering rocks. That is one of the most mundane tasks in the world, but on a different world, there is nothing more exciting. Everything we take for granted on Earth is like another from the universe when you're on Mars. To this day, I remember how it felt. To this day, I remember how the sand squished under my boot. But what I remember most of all was how alive I felt. I don't know if anybody has ever felt that alive, I know I sure haven't. I remember that the most. That's the one thing the pictures I took can never make you feel, but when I look at them, I remember as clearly as if I was still there.