Journalist Report – January 4th – Mars Desert Research Station

[Sol 4]

Today proved relatively restful for most of the team. Cesare Guariniello, our geologist, cooked chocolate pancakes for the crew after an early morning yoga session once again led by Kshitij Mall, the executive officer. Though a hearty EVA to the north in search of salt deposits was planned, it was cut short by unanticipated difficulties with one of the ATVs. The EVA team of 4 returned just after 1 pm and, given the strenuous expeditions of the last few days, was more than happy to spend the remainder of the afternoon catching up on various tasks. We deployed a small robotic rover built by the NorCal Mars Society and took turns operating it remotely in the vicinity of the hab. Mark Gee, the green hab scientist, has also made significant progress on his microgreens research and gave the team a tour of his experiments. The gesture complimented the lecture Cesare gave to us last night on the local geology.

Tonight the team will try our hand at making pizza out of the abundance of powdered and freeze dried ingredients. Afterwards we will continue to relax over card games and television shows. Hopefully it will be enough to ease tensions over the nutella. Today’s EVA crew ascended a ridge named “Mount Nutella” (no joke) but the effort proved futile in replenishing our reserves.

Justin Mansell, MDRS Crew 186 Journalist

MDRS Field Season #22 (2022-23)

Oct 1-16— Work Party

(Oct 20-23—TMS Conference in Tempe Arizona)

Oct 24-28—Crew 266-- Spaceward Bound High School

Oct 30—Nov 12—Crew 267—WOMARS

Nov 13—26—Crew 268-- Mars Society All women crew

Nov 27—Dec 10— Crew 269--The Aerospace Corporation Team

Dec 11—17 (one week) —Crew 270 -- NASA Spaceward Bound Utah Cohort 4

Dec 18— 31—Crew 271— Mars Society crew

Jan 1—14, 2023— Crew 272-- Purdue

Jan 15—28— Crew 273— Spanish Language Crew

Jan 29--Feb 11—Crew 274— APUS ARG-1M

Feb 12—Mar 11-- Crew 275— Supaero

Mar 12—18 — No Crew (Spring Break)

Mar 19-25 (one week) — Crew 277— Class

Mar 26—Apr 1 (one week) — Crew 278— Class

Apr 2—15— Crew 279— M.A.R.S. UC Louvain

Apr 16—29—Crew 280— Hypatia

Apr 30—May 13—Crew 261— Transatlantic Mars Society

May 14—27— Crew 281— Project Possum Alumni

June 1—3— University Rover Challenge

June 4-10 (one week)— Crew 282— Martian Biology III

June 11-17 - Summer Closeout Crew

About The MDRS

The Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert was established by the Mars Society in 2001 to better educate researchers, students and the general public about how humans can survive on the Red Planet. It is the second Mars analogue habitat after the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station was established in 2000.

Over 200 crews of six-person teams have lived in 1-2 week field visits at MDRS to simulate life on the Martian surface. Researchers and students alike have explored the Mars-like terrain in the area surrounding the station in full “spacesuits”, maintained the station’s systems, grown plants in the GreenHab to support themselves and even recycled their waste water.

Our activities at MDRS are not only about informing the public, but also conducting real research to bring humanity that much closer to the reality of human exploration on the planet Mars.

Annual field seasons at MDRS run approx. October through May. Anybody can apply to be on a crew, and we also need volunteers to help with the project.

Management Team

Mission Support

Journalist Report – January 4th

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