Month: March 2019

Sol 18

Author : Benjamin Auzou, Journalist

Meaningful thoughts

Even more than yesterday, we are feeling the end of the mission
approaching, today we cleaned the entire station to prepare the arrival
of crew 207, filmed answers to questions asked by French middle and high
school students on our mission, and explored for the first time the
Eastern part of the MDRS campus. It was a special EVA since it was the
last of the mission for Cerise and Jérémie, and if Cerise may be back as
a Commander next year, it was for Jérémie the last EVA on Martian soil
as a member of an ISAE-SUPAERO crew, which gave a particular flavor to
the exploration. We visited the surroundings of the Candor Chasma canyon
and its majestic and unknown landscapes for all of us. We took the time
to admire what we had in front of our eyes and Jérémie was able to take
his last shots of the Red Planet. I especially want to thank him for
what he did for the crew and the Club MARS (our assocation); Green-Hab
Officer of mission 189 and Commander of this mission 206, he was
actively involved in the smooth running of these missions and the
development of scientific experiments. In parallel he also participated
in the diversification of the activities of the association, by getting
involved in particular in the social opening activities of the program
OSE L’ISAE-SUPAERO. On behalf of the rest of the crew, I wish him well
in the exciting internship that awaits him and for his graduation, with
the certainty that the three weeks we spent together here have forged
links that go beyond the distance that will cause our dispersion
throughout the world for our different internships and courses.

After these three busy weeks of mission, which will end tomorrow, we
begin to make the balance of this adventure. Everyone came here with
goals, whether individual or collective, and we are starting to get the
answers. How are we going to live in confinement? How will relationships
within the crew evolve? What scientific results are we going to get?
These are the reasons of this human and scientific mission. We have
prepared for a year this mission together in parallel with other actions
such as interventions in middle schools and high schools. This is what
makes us a welded and unflappable crew and founds all the human
dimension of the mission : we learned a lot about ourselves and the life
of a crew.

But we’re doing this mission first and foremost to advance science and
bring Man to Mars. We spent three weeks in confinement, participating in
and deploying many experiments. These had the goal to study the
influence of confinement on our behavior, performance, motivation, but
also to establish experimental reproducible protocols in the perspective
of a scientific mission to Mars.

While Neil Armstrong made the first leap on the Moon for Humanity, the
first step on Mars will be made by humanity. The key to the success of
this great human building is collaboration: be it international
collaboration or collaboration between national and private actors.
Indeed, the exploration of Mars can not be the work of a single nation,
of an isolated compagny, but of a group of organizations and people. And
if a small number of people will first reach the red planet, this will
be the result of the work of many people before them. Engineers working
in agencies and companies on the production of technical resources,
scientists involved in the development of concepts and processes to
improve human space flight, diplomats acting to promote space
exploration, students who participate in their scale to the foundations
of modern space flight, teachers giving to the young population the
passion of science, the people passionate about space that speak around
them about this passion and the advances that it generates, etc…

In the last days of this mission, I have a special thought for my high
school physics teacher, Pascal Martin, who tragically died of a car
accident. This fascinating man has always impressed me with the passion
and heart he put into the teaching of science, and so much more. He also
had the ability to adapt to the needs of each student that allowed
everyone to make progress, whether they were a little genius of physics
or a student in difficulty. In particular, he transmitted to me, in
addition to knowledge of the school program, a big part of his curiosity
for science, his desire to discover things, while working to share
knowledge. I recognize him particularly in the two vocations of the Club
MARS: research and scientific popularization.
To him who wanted the success and happiness of all of his students, in
and out of school, in private and professional life, I can assure you
that today I am living a wonderful adventure that contributes to an even
greater goal. And for that and on behalf of all my classmates he has
participated in the success and accomplishment: Thank you! Sol 18

Author : Benjamin Auzou, Journalist

Meaningful thoughts

Even more than yesterday, we are feeling the end of the mission
approaching, today we cleaned the entire station to prepare the arrival
of crew 207, filmed answers to questions asked by French middle and high
school students on our mission, and explored for the first time the
Eastern part of the MDRS campus. It was a special EVA since it was the
last of the mission for Cerise and Jérémie, and if Cerise may be back as
a Commander next year, it was for Jérémie the last EVA on Martian soil
as a member of an ISAE-SUPAERO crew, which gave a particular flavor to
the exploration. We visited the surroundings of the Candor Chasma canyon
and its majestic and unknown landscapes for all of us. We took the time
to admire what we had in front of our eyes and Jérémie was able to take
his last shots of the Red Planet. I especially want to thank him for
what he did for the crew and the Club MARS (our assocation); Green-Hab
Officer of mission 189 and Commander of this mission 206, he was
actively involved in the smooth running of these missions and the
development of scientific experiments. In parallel he also participated
in the diversification of the activities of the association, by getting
involved in particular in the social opening activities of the program
OSE L’ISAE-SUPAERO. On behalf of the rest of the crew, I wish him well
in the exciting internship that awaits him and for his graduation, with
the certainty that the three weeks we spent together here have forged
links that go beyond the distance that will cause our dispersion
throughout the world for our different internships and courses.

After these three busy weeks of mission, which will end tomorrow, we
begin to make the balance of this adventure. Everyone came here with
goals, whether individual or collective, and we are starting to get the
answers. How are we going to live in confinement? How will relationships
within the crew evolve? What scientific results are we going to get?
These are the reasons of this human and scientific mission. We have
prepared for a year this mission together in parallel with other actions
such as interventions in middle schools and high schools. This is what
makes us a welded and unflappable crew and founds all the human
dimension of the mission : we learned a lot about ourselves and the life
of a crew.

But we’re doing this mission first and foremost to advance science and
bring Man to Mars. We spent three weeks in confinement, participating in
and deploying many experiments. These had the goal to study the
influence of confinement on our behavior, performance, motivation, but
also to establish experimental reproducible protocols in the perspective
of a scientific mission to Mars.

While Neil Armstrong made the first leap on the Moon for Humanity, the
first step on Mars will be made by humanity. The key to the success of
this great human building is collaboration: be it international
collaboration or collaboration between national and private actors.
Indeed, the exploration of Mars can not be the work of a single nation,
of an isolated compagny, but of a group of organizations and people. And
if a small number of people will first reach the red planet, this will
be the result of the work of many people before them. Engineers working
in agencies and companies on the production of technical resources,
scientists involved in the development of concepts and processes to
improve human space flight, diplomats acting to promote space
exploration, students who participate in their scale to the foundations
of modern space flight, teachers giving to the young population the
passion of science, the people passionate about space that speak around
them about this passion and the advances that it generates, etc…

In the last days of this mission, I have a special thought for my high
school physics teacher, Pascal Martin, who tragically died of a car
accident. This fascinating man has always impressed me with the passion
and heart he put into the teaching of science, and so much more. He also
had the ability to adapt to the needs of each student that allowed
everyone to make progress, whether they were a little genius of physics
or a student in difficulty. In particular, he transmitted to me, in
addition to knowledge of the school program, a big part of his curiosity
for science, his desire to discover things, while working to share
knowledge. I recognize him particularly in the two vocations of the Club
MARS: research and scientific popularization.
To him who wanted the success and happiness of all of his students, in
and out of school, in private and professional life, I can assure you
that today I am living a wonderful adventure that contributes to an even
greater goal. And for that and on behalf of all my classmates he has
participated in the success and accomplishment: Thank you!

Sol 17

"Emergency return"

When the EVA team of the day was exploring the South area of the station
they faced strong winds and took the decision to get back to the
station. The beginning of the EVA rolled out fine : they went to the
weather station to do some maintenance, as usual. Then they headed
south. The first stop was done before the Kissing Camels Ridges. The
wind was still low enough, but it was getting colder. It’s at their
second stop that things started to get serious : after 10 minutes
walking, the wind increased dramatically and quickly, the EVA team was
starting to feel the cold of the wind through their gloves. It was
getting hard to hear other members through the radio, and the wind was
pushing them around. Cerise, EVA leader, took the right decision to
abort the EVA and head straight back to the rovers. The team drove right
back to the Hab. The wind strained to rover’s batteries quite a lot. The
team arrived in the Hab feeling frozen, but safe and sound.
This EVA was different from the rest of our mission, Cerise, Jérémy,
Aurélien and Norbert explored a wide region without a precise goal
except the will to explore and discover unknown areas. They drove the
rovers along Cow Dung Road and stopped each time they found a nice
geologic spot. That’s real exploration, like the first settlers will
have to do on Mars.

Today was a milestone for some of us, our mission will end in less than
two days and we started to realize that today. The effect on our
behaviors is strange : we have a foot on Earth but the other one still
sealed on Mars. On one hand it’s easier for us to live in this
philosophy as confinement has less weight on us. But on the other hand
the mission is one of the most intense moments of our lives that we
prepared for one year and it’s hard to see its end coming. Two of us
will return to the MDRS to be commander of the 2020 missions of
ISAE-SUPAERO but for the others these are certainly our last days on the
Red Planet. It affects the life of the Hab and the experiments. But it’s
very different from a crew member to another. For example Aurélien and
Norbert felt the end of the mission coming very fast while I’m still
feeling like an astronaut in the middle of its rotation, I was really
surprised when Aurélien told me that tomorrow we will start to pack our
luggage. The fact that in three days we will be on a plane to Paris
makes us feel different in these days than if we were in the middle of a
longer mission. We are thinking about the return more than ever and that
affects us, and I think that these days, like the first days of the
mission are less pertinent to the extent of science and human factors.
On Saturday, crew 207 will join us in the MDRS. The Hab and the crew
will be ready to welcome them and let them start science here.