Crew 206 – 03/03/2019
Sol 7
Author: Benjamin Auzou, Journalist
"Martian Sol-Off"
For our first day-off of the mission, we played cards, begin to complete the Mars puzzle of the MDRS. But above all we spend a lot of time in the kitchen: Gaspard and Aurélien prepared pancakes for breakfast, Jérémy and Cerise baked French baguettes, and Aurélien and I cooked a gratin dauphinois (potatoes cooked in cream and cheese baked in the oven). All that was bettered by the basil leafs brought by Norbert from the Green-Hab.
Outside the Hab, the weather changed all along the day. After a sunny morning and a rainy noon, the afternoon was shared between grey clouds and hail. Even if it wasn’t Mars-like, the sound of rain and hail on the Habs roof was relaxing. In the same time our furious Monopoly Deal games were the great activity of the afternoon, even if Gaspard’s luck with cards drawing killed the competition.
This day-off is for us the occasion to present you the results of our water monitoring. We are counting the water we use in different categories: drinking, cooking, dishes, hygiene, flushes and Green-Hab. Thanks to that we managed to reduce our consumption and realized a precise monitoring. We measured in average 88% of our water consumption and classified that in the categories for each sol spend in the MDRS.
Today we recharged our batteries for the week to come that will be busy between the first tests our own simulation spacesuit and the follow-up of the human factors experiments.
More than one third of our mission is done, this first week was balanced between the first marks in the station, the first scientific experiments but also the first difficulties. As in all space missions, we are facing difficulties and we are led to adapt ourselves and react with what we have here in the station. More than ever, we are feeling that we make science evolve in the right way to Mars.