I travelled down to Sardinia while listening to Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann, and sure enough it made me think of the regression towards the mean for the CAVES course itself. CAVES 2011 and 2012 had been excellent, would CAVES 2013 live up to previous years?

CAVES 2013 was upgraded in many ways: new helmet lights, which are the envy of speleologists, allowed Paolo Nespoli to take survey photo cross-sections by himself, “painting” the walls with his headlamp alone.

The ‘Cave Sniper’ was a jewel: Satoshi Furukawa and Jack Fischer surveyed 1500 m in just a few hours.

The new Grigua CAVES shoes, specially adapted for us allowed Jeremy Hansen to move like a gecko during his scouting trips with Alexey Ovchinin.

The portable CO2 monitor allowed Mike Barratt  to discover interesting variations on the levels of CO2 throughout the cave. A promising result for scientists.

Our Arxo video team used powerful new lights to create artistic and thematic videos documenting closely the strong analogies between speleology and spaceflight, with their usual touch of humour.

But the crown jewel was the extraordinary team that has assembled around ESA’s CAVES programme throughout the past few years. By now it’s enough to say one word, and the whole team starts their ballet around participants: discreet but alert, and ready to intervene as “robots” to explore difficult but promising new cave branches, or act as advisors, providing useful tips on exploration techniques or sampling methods.

They are a team of speleologists, scientists and explorers, who provide advice throughout the preparation phase, who share their experiences with the astronauts, who are respected and respectful of the astronaut participants who a few weeks ago were just biographies on an agency web site, and are now sympathetic companions of a successful expedition.

If it’s been a regression towards the mean, it’s been an upgrade, and it’s all thanks to the extraordinary CAVES staff.

Thank you guys and gals!

Loredana Bessone