Sol Summary – March 1st

Crew 189 Sol Summary Report 01 March 2018

Sol 11

Summary Title: The first EVA without veterans

Author: Victoria Da-Poian

Mission Status: All nominal

Sol Activity Summary: This morning, the crew woke up lately (35 minutes late) , and we decided not to do our physical exercise as an EVA was planned at 9am. After our breakfast, Alex (EVA leader), Jérémy, Laurent and Benoit went outside to perform their first EVA without Louis or me in the team. I have to say I was quite worry to let my “little martians” go outside without Louis or me. The EVA went well even if we faced some radios issues (our Habcom Gabriel was hardly able to communicate with the EVA team …) The afternoon was dedicated to our human factors experiments (the competition is really funny to observe).

Look Ahead Plan: Tomorrow, we will all work on our outside experiments (MegaARES and LOAC), on the radios issues and will explore again Mars. On Saturday, we will welcome a French journalist and everyone seems happy to see a new face. We will all work on our experiments and have our routine (physical training in the morning, human factors experiments, bread competition…)

Anomalies in work: Water leak in the Hab Lower deck

Weather: Cloudy and windy

Crew Physical Status: Fine

EVA: 8th

Reports to be filed:
Commander
Journalist
Engineering
Greenhab Officer
EVA

Support Requested: None

Greenhab Report – March 1st

GreenHab Report
AUCLAIR Jérémy
1st March 2018

Environmental control:

(door closed)
Heating once the sun was down
80 % Shade cloth on

Average temperatures:
Around 30 °C at 10am, around 24 °C the rest of the day

Hours of supplemental light: from 7pm to 9pm

Changes to crops: One cucumber plant died

Daily water usage for crops: around 8 gallons

Time(s) of watering for crops: 9:00 am and 7:30pm

Narrative: none

Support/supplies needed: none

Commander Report – March 1st

Crew 189 Commander Report 01Mar2018

Sol 11
Today started with a long EVA on the outside lead by Alexandre, to explore Lith Canyon. It was also the first time that an EVA left Victoria and I in the Hab, so that no senior crewmembers were on the outside. Quite a strange feeling to let our fellow crewmembers take care of themselves after having watched over them for more than 10 days, but surely normal and necessary. Obviously, nothing went wrong, and they managed their time well.

The only problem we faced today was walkie-talkies working very poorly, probably due to the weather. Gabriel, being Habcom struggled giving instructions to the team while we were hearing what was happening on the outside. It was very frustrating, and lead to some minor misunderstanding, and the EVA team having to knock at the door… We planned to investigate further on that tomorrow, to try to understand better the talkies ranges.

During the afternoon, we struggled defusing bombs while playing Gabriel’s experiment. It is very enriching as you can see accentuated personalities, and group dynamics in action. It surely helps us communicate efficiently, avoid common mistakes while trying to hurry.

The game is very frustrating as you have to deal with missing (and sometimes false) information to help a defuser you cannot see, obviously leading to mistakes. As everybody here is very competitive and wants to score as much as possible, the result might be very funny to watch from the outside. We had our series of success, failures or rage, and it clearly kept everybody awake.

We then spent time working on several experiments, and for instance, I helped Benoit on GPS navigation today. Very cool to come back to some low-level development to create a simple user interface to be used in EVA!
Everybody seems to be fine at Sol 11, exercising well, being in a good mood. Food supplies are more than half full, so that we might start increasing the doses, to help us live this last week to come on Mars!

Louis Mangin,
Crew 189 Commander

Operations Report – March 1st

Crew 189 Operations Report 1 March 2018

SOL: 11

Name of person filing report: Gabriel PAYEN
Non-nominal systems: Pipe leak, radios
Notes on non-nominal systems:
– The pipe still leaks at the low deck
– During the EVA, I was the HabCom and had troubles to communicates with EVA members: the range of emission of my radios (I tried three) were very short (~10 meters around the Hab) even if their reception worked well. It led to misunderstandings between EVA members and the Hab, fortunately without consequences (except a loss of time). Nevertheless, it could have worst issues in case of emergency, then we’ll do several checks (mainly about communication range) during the EVA planned tomorrow.

Generator (hours run): Generator turned off at 4:00 AM and turned on at 6:15 AM Solar— SOC – % (Before generator is run at night)

Diesel – Not checked
Propane – 28 psi.
Ethanol Free Gasoline (5 Gallon containers for ATV) – 5 gallons.

Water (trailer) – 0 gallons.
Water (static) – 380 (~75%) gallons
Trailer to Static Pump used – NO
Water (loft) – Static to Loft Pump used – YES
Water Meter: 131 570.2
Toilet tank emptied: NO

ATV’s Used: 1,2,3 & Honda
Oil Added : NO

ATV Fuel Used: Gals

Hours the ATVs were Used today: 3 hours
Notes on ATVs:

Deimos rover used: NO but back after being repaired
Hours: 112.7
Beginning charge: 100%
Ending charge: NA
Currently charging: ?

Sojourner rover used: ASSIGNED TO DIRECTOR
Hours:
Beginning charge:
Ending charge:
Currently charging:

Spirit rover used: NO
Hours: 21.9
Beginning charge: 100%
Ending charge: NA
Currently charging: YES

Opportunity rover used: NO
Hours: 18.0
Beginning charge: 100%
Ending charge: NA
Currently charging: NO

Curiosity rover used: NO
Hours: 15.3
Beginning charge: 100%
Ending charge: NA
Currently charging: YES

HabCar used and why, where : Used to get a load of 110 gallons and for garbage

General notes and comments:
Summary of internet:
Summary of suits and radios: –
Summary of Hab operations:
Summary of GreenHab operations:
Summary of ScienceDome operations:
Summary of RAMM operations:
Summary of health and safety issues:
Questions, concerns and requests to Mission Support:

Journalist Report – March 1st

Journalist Report – Sol 11 03/01/18

Further, Faster, Stronger

For the second time of the simulation, there has not been a sport session this morning. But this time, that was not because we reached a break day. No, the team just was not able to wake up early enough. Yet we did not stay in bed until noon either! We indeed had an EVA planned at 9am, so we had to hurry! For the first time, neither Louis nor Victoria would be a member of the EVA. Laurent, Benoît and Jérémy made up the team, while I was their leader. We made our usual at our instruments to change the LOAC batteries. However, we realized that the batteries of the MegaARES were also at a dangerously low level. We had to go back to the Hab to ask Gabriel whether we had to change it too, yet he declined, as he believed that could be done tomorrow. We could then go on with the core of our EVA: exploration.

As we were going further north than we ever went before, we decided to ride the ATV: one of each one of us! These ones are indeed way faster and more pleasant to drive than rovers. As we did not bring any heavy material on EVA, there was thus no issue not having rovers. After a 20 minutes’ drive, quite longer than we were used to, we finally arrived to the canyon we aimed to visit today. This canyon was a bit special: he was divided in several stratums under the one we parked the ATV on. The entry of the canyon was decorated by a display panel about dinosaurs, whose fossils are likely to be found here. Not the most Martian of the things we have seen here, but it is yet quite cool to know that! We then tried to enter the first level of the canyon: it has been a bit hard to find a way down at first, but after some researches we finally discovered an easy one. This small trip is the canyon was really nice, even though it revealed to be tiring! We found some small caves where Benoît and I could take a break in, while Jérémy seemed to have borrowed Benoîts lure for small beautiful stones. Once we completed our trip to the depths of the canyon, it was almost time to ride our ATV back to the Hab!

The return trip was outstanding. To be able to drive a lonely vehicle in such a beautiful landscape, the sensation of the ATV rolling over rocks, everything was delightful. But this moment could not last forever, and the Hab quickly appeared in our eyesight, ready to welcome us. Or at least, that is what we thought. We indeed got no response from the Hab: Gabriel, today’s HabCom, remained silent. 10 minutes later, we decided to go back to the instruments to get the empty batteries we left there, not to be cluttered on our ATV. But as we came back, Gabriel finally responded! Yet, it was to ask us to go back where we came from, and turn off the MegaARES… This was however useless, as the MegaARES was already shut down because of the low battery. Gabriel was by the way worth some derogatory remarks because of this meaningless return trip. Remarks we finally regretted when we discovered that our communication issues were due to the walkie-talkies, which stopped functioning.

Our today session of KTNE was quite less successful than the previous one, especially for Benoît and Louis, which were not able to find a specific word in a list of 25 in 3 minutes, and they had several difficulties counting up to 4, which led to some loud funny shouting matches. And today was also the day I could (finally!) take my first shower! I also was able to beat the best score of the crew, going down to 1.2 gallons for my shower. It is hard to say that we had almost lost the habit to smell nice here. This shower was yet really pleasant, and my hair is at last not standing anymore on its own!

Alexandre Martin, Crew 189 Journalist

EVA Report – March 1st

EVA Report:
EVA #8 Crew members: Alexandre Martin (EVA leader), Benoît FLOQUET, Laurent BIZIEN, Jérémy AUCLAIR

Author: Alexandre Martin

Location:
Near Pooh’s Corner: 12S-518900E-4250900N
Lith Canyon: 12S-518300E-4256500N

Time: departure at 9:00 p.m. Duration: 3h

Purposes:
• Replace the battery of the LOAC
• Explore Lith Canyon

Narrative:
We started our EVA placing Laurent’s solar panels experiment next to the GreenHab. After a small trip to Pooh’s Corner to deal with our instruments, we rode our ATV to explore Lith Canyon. We made a large 1h40 walk there, enough to visit a great part of it. We then went back to the Hab, yet we were not able to contact our Habcom. We discovered later that this was a walkie-talkie issue, maybe because of the weather (fast winds). 10 minutes later, he was finally able to hear us, and we could come back in the Hab

9:00 am: EVA#8 left airlock
9:15 am: EVA#8 left the Hab
9:16 am: EVA#8 arrived at Pooh’s corner
9:25 am: EVA#8 left Pooh’s Corner
9:45 am: EVA#8 arrived at Lith Canyon
11:25 am: EVA#8 left Lith Canyon
11:45 am: EVA#8 back at the Hab
12:00 am: EVA#8 back in the Hab

Copyright © The Mars Society. All rights reserved. | Main Site