Month: December 2018

Crew 201 Journalist Report – 23DEC2018

The Martian Chronicles

[SOL 8] – (Not) any given Sunday

A good day to spend with family and friends is Sunday. A nice cookout on the backyard is always a good idea. In Mexico, going to visit a museum is very common, because most of them are open for free on Sundays. And what about a nice picnic? It doesn’t matter what you do, the important thing is to spend the day surrounded by people you care. Like spending the afternoon with your crewmates on the station’s observatory watching the sun through the solar telescope. Pretty average Sunday, right?

MDRS Crew 201 – MEx-1

Wait what? How can this be? It’s been a week since we landed on the red planet and we can yet grab a break in our daily lives. A lot of things have happened since then, quite a few if you ask me. Weather is getting a bit cold, lower clouds in the morning and night and to us it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Mars. It’s exciting we’ll celebrate it more than 50 million kilometers away from home and family! But no spoilers for now; we’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Not every day is exploration day, many things have to be done at home for station keeping. Sweeping the Martian dust off our modules is key for health and safety, so we swept every module, airlock and floor in the station. Nothing brings the best of the crew than cleaning and singing and our lead rapper Chilpo did his thing while we worked around our home. Reconstituted chicken fried rice was up for dinner today and the taste was very similar to what you could imagine Mars China Town could ever taste like.

The afternoon had a fantastic group activity: Solar Observations at Musk Observatory. Federico, our in house astronomer, had great patience and went over the regular procedures to observe our Sun. The Sun you see from Earth is the same we look from Mars which makes living in this Solar System a little more romantic. We pointed the telescope and the corona of the Sun was at sight. When living at another planet that is not shielded like Earth we need to know the behavior of the Sun and we may need to hide from its eruptions.

Continuous learning is also key for survival in another planet. While our communications were installed before arrival, upgrades are always needed to maintain a state-of-the-art system at the hab. With this all being said, the crew today learned more in depth how satellite communications work. Satellite access, frequencies, power and gain are key topics needed in order to upgrade our communications network and by knowing the basics the crew is ready to upgrade this and other habitats that we may inhabit in the future.

Sundays on Earth: we clean, we enjoy ourselves and learn. Why not do the same while on Mars? Sol Ocho was if not the most exciting day in our Mars travels it sure was fantastic family time.

MEx-1 continuará informando.

Walter A. Calles & Genaro Grajeda, MDRS Crew 201 Co-Journalists

Crew 201 Journalist Report – 22DEC2018

The Martian Chronicles

[SOL 7] – The Far Side of the Moons

We are explorers! We humans have broken every barrier we’ve
encountered through our existence. We know no boundaries to explore a little bit more and learn about our universe. We have walked through the meadows, sailed to remote islands, arrived at new continents and re-discover them; all of this to look to the stars and wonder what is there for us to reach. Exploration is part of us and pushes us forward to go where no one has (boldly) gone before. We aim to open our minds to what we think we know and go a step further to explore even more.

MDRS Crew 201 – MEx-1

Today the crew planned a long and complex activity, a visit to one of the farthest locations of the premises of the hab. A location with mountains and canyons that might be hard for the first time hiker. Our boots got dirty while walking to the horizon and wonder what will we find after the next hill. And what did we find? Well dear reader, this area was a bit farther from the charted maps and we could only have had an idea of how the place looked like.

What is the reason for us to explore? Well it is the reason for existence itself: Understand the meaning of life and what is our part in all of it. Additionally, we needed to get more soil samples for the greenhab project. We have realized that understanding the complexity of the terrain at the farthest regions of the hab premises could help us with the extended scope of the Radio Access Network idea for a SmartHAB. What is the reason behind this? Extended network access can support future crews’ safety knowing their location, health status and spacesuit problems. Safety is number one priority.

Due to Mars complex weather conditions, Mission Control mentioned (in several occasions really) that we would have a real hard time hiking. Road conditions were considerably harder than we would have expected and we left our rovers a little earlier than anticipated. We started hiking in a different location than planned and things got quite interesting from the very beginning. We went up and down muddy hills, getting farther away from our starting point making new paths as we went up the mountains. Destination? Copernicus, one of the furthest charted regions in our hab going through a place known as The Moons.

Throughout our hike we were witness of dramatic scenery changes. We were getting far away from our home but closer to our goal. Nothing was more exciting and comforting than finding the road that we were looking for. At that instance we were a bit tired but our morale and our spirit of adventure were as strong as ever. And this is
understandable, we were so far from the rovers that we could not hesitate for even the shortest instant.

It wasn’t until we made it to the farthest location of the Yellow Moon that we realized something exciting: we went to a zone that is not heavily explored and of course new for us. Sure, it was identified in the map but we know not of another crew that walked around it. This was confirmed by our Positioning System that we joyfully checked while getting back at the hab.

Without a doubt, this is one of the most exciting days of the Mex-1 mission. This was the day we discovered The Far Side of the Moons.

MEx-1 continuará informando.