Month: February 2022

Sol 9: Focus on: Mars’ Atmosphere – LOAC, Mega-ARES, Purple Air, and weather station

Author: Pierre Fabre

Hi everyone! Welcome back to this new report! Today is a new episode of “Focus on”, our format in which we talk about the experiments we brought with us on Mars. In this episode, we are going to talk about several experiments we perform for the French center of scientific research that aim at gathering data about the air on Mars. This will surely be very interesting!

But before, as usual, let’s talk about what happened during this Sol 9 on Mars!

I have to talk to you about something. At MDRS, the toilet goes directly into a tank. One of the missions of Francois, our engineer, is to empty that tank when it is full. I can assure you that this is not a pleasure at all and for all of us, he is kind of the hero of this station. Since the beginning of the mission, we’ve noticed that he had to empty that tank way too frequently. This morning, the tank was full again and with the help of our Commander, they decided to finally address the problem.

They discovered that there was a solid part (yes, this is disgusting) at the bottom of the tank and that was the reason why the tank was getting full so fast. We will hopefully now be able to find a solution to this issue knowing the origin! We really owe them one on this one. When we will be back on Earth, we will definitely offer them a good Earthly burger to thank them for their courage and their devotion.

The EVA of this morning was dedicated to my experiment of 3D mapping with drones. Without spoiling what will be said in a future episode of « Focus on », this experiment aims, in short, at showing that having a 3D map while preparing your EVA’s itinerary makes you safer during the EVA and less tired at the end of it. Now that we know that drones can fly on Mars thanks to Ingenuity, it can be interesting to question their usefulness. A potential use can be to avoid Marsonauts taking useless risks or losing energy in vain on a hard path if a better path can be found by a drone.

For that purpose, I will compare how my crewmates perform at reaching the summit of North Ridge regarding whether or not they had the 3D map during their preparation. I already said too much but it will be clearer in the « Focus on » episode so don’t miss it!

So, as I was saying, this morning we went to North Ridge and reached its summit for the first time. It was a great moment and we were really happy to contemplate the Hab from the top of the same Ridge we see from the kitchen’s window. Tomorrow, the crew members that stayed at the Hab this morning will do the same ascent of North Ridge and then I will be able to analyse the data from the whole crew.

This afternoon, after all the energy he lost in the toilet’s tank this morning, Francois, our Engineer, and friendly neighbourhood hero, still managed to find the motivation to work on our spacesuits. In fact, some crew members noticed two or three days ago that the air cooling in their helmets was not as strong as at the beginning of the mission.

This can be a huge problem for physically demanding EVAs like the one we did this morning because during the effort the helmet fogs up and you lose your visibility. Losing your visibility means you might fail to see a rock on the floor and fall. I can assure you that falling during an EVA, with a heavy spacesuit on your back and the risk of breaking your helmet, is all you want to avoid!

After some tests, he discovered that the issue came from the batteries. Since yesterday, he has been performing tests on the batteries and on their chargers to find what was the issue and how to fix it. He is exchanging with the staff of the MDRS that gives him advice on what to do regarding the results of the tests he performed. He is getting close and we know he will succeed soon! Francois will soon have the opportunity to talk to you directly about his work at MDRS in an episode of « Interview with » dedicated to the Engineer so don’t miss it!

But now it is time to talk about science, it is time for the « Focus on »!

“-Ok Clément, so first, why did we bring those experiments with us?

-Well, we’re lucky enough at MDRS that the terrain and environment we work in resembles, in many ways, things we can expect to find on Mars. In particular, what we have here is a particularly arid environment, with lots of dust that can be kicked up by winds. So, this is a good testbed for the study of atmospheric phenomena we could expect to see there.

In particular, one of the atmospheric events that can have a big impact on a Martian mission is dust storms. They can get extremely large, and have an effect on the efficiency of solar panels, visibility on terrain, or also long-distance communications. This is why developing tools to study the presence and characteristics of this dust in the air, and the properties of the atmosphere during those events can be very useful for ensuring the safety of the first people to set foot on Mars. This is the main purpose of these experiments.

-Ok that’s cool! What is LOAC?

LOAC stands for Light Optical Aerosol Counter. This is a piece of equipment that was developed in an atmospheric sciences laboratory in Orléans, France, for the purpose of counting particles of dust in the air, their sizes, and the flow – this is very helpful to study the composition of dust storms. It’s been used in numerous campaigns not only on the ground but also in the upper atmosphere on high altitude balloons, and it’s even planned for a launch on a nanosatellite to ensure it is space ready for a potential launch to another planet!

-Ok, that first one is cool! And what is Mega-ARES?

-Mega-ARES is an instrument that measures the electric field in the air near the ground. There are many atmospheric events that can modify the electric field, and dust particles rubbing on one another can create electric charges in the air that can be measured by this very sensitive equipment. In the dust storms of Mars, we’re studying the possibility that large amounts of friction can cause electric currents in the air. So, when particles are heavy in the air and hit each other between the large antenna of the tool and the ground, or hit the antenna directly, it gets detected. While LOAC measures the types of particles in the air, Mega-ARES studies the influence these particles have on the low atmosphere.

Mega-ARES is the bigger, Earth-primed brother of Micro-ARES, which was a payload on the Schiaparelli lander designed by the European Space Agency, and that was scheduled to land on Mars around 10 years ago. Unfortunately, the lander failed when arriving on the Red Planet, and the researchers are hard at work trying to get it on a mission in the future. In the meantime, tests like those done at MDRS help gather data that shows how useful this sort of tool could be on Mars.

-Those experiments were both brought by previous Supaéro crews but this year we have a newcomer. What is Purple Air?

-PurpleAir is a tool for measuring air quality – this means it detects some particles that could be linked to human activity. It’s a very useful extra tool to have all the details we need for the other experiments. Both of them work better far away from human influence and will gain valuable data from knowing more about the composition of some of the particles in the air.

-And why is the weather station so important?

-The weather station is a great tool for double-checking our data – many experiments do their own measurements of temperatures and other data, but getting this specific information twice helps us make sure that there are no issues with the equipment. In addition to this, knowing wind speed and direction are important pieces of data to correlate with the measurements from the tool, for the obvious reason that high winds create dust storms, which are the important things we’re studying with these experiments.

As an aside, the station directly emits data to our receivers in the station, which helps us get live data about the outside conditions – and that’s been particularly helpful for those few times with high winds where, unfortunately, that station got knocked over!”

Okay, that’s it for this episode of “Focus on”! I hope you enjoyed it and that you learned something! I can’t wait for the next episode to tell you more about our experiments!

Crew 240 Journalist Report

8-FEB-2022

Pierre Fabre

Sol 8: Interview with: Biologist – Why go on an Analog Mission?

Hi everyone welcome back for another episode of « Interview with ». Today we are going to talk with Marion Burnichon. She is the crew’s biologist but also the crew’s botanist as Raphael is sadly not there to take care of the GreenHab.

But before starting this exciting interview let’s talk about what happened during this Sol 8 on Mars!

After the incredible exploration of Candor Chasma last week, our crew was looking for a new zone to explore, a new destination. Julie, the EVA leader of the day, decided to go for an ambitious exploration: Moon Overlook. Ok let’s make this clear, we are still on Mars, but this particular zone is characterised by a gray sand that makes it look just like the Moon. I said ambitious because it is pretty far to the North of the Hab. They went as close as they could to the zone with Curiosity and Spirit (remember those are the names of the rover we drive at MDRS), but they still had to walk pretty far after that to reach the Moon Overlook. But what they found there was worth the efforts. They discovered the 5 famous Martian Moons: the Yellow Moon, the Gray Moon, the Beige Moon, the White Moon and last but not least, The Moon.

The pictures they managed to take before coming back are awesome and the place looks so cool, but unfortunately, with Marion, we stayed at the Hab to be able to rescue them if something happens. It was the second time for me but it is what it is, I had work to do for my drone experiment and I interviewed Marion so it was a good morning too.

Talking about the drone experiment, this afternoon I trained my crewmates to use the Pix4D software so that they will be able to use the 3D maps of North Ridge for tomorrow’s EVA (as promised in a previous report I will tell you more about this experiment in a « Focus on » episode so stay tuned).

This afternoon, after the training, Julie started her project of growing spirulina. Spirulina is a very interesting algae in the context of space food. Today she created the two solutions in which the Spirulina will grow. In both, she put an additional solution of stabilised and treated urine made by Toopi-Organics, a French startup. But in one of them, she put more than in the other. The objective is to analyse the effect of their urine-based solution on the growth of Spirulina. I personally can’t wait to see the results of that cool experiment which will be the subject of a « Focus on » episode!

In the meantime, Francois and Maxime, as usual, spent some time in the RAM to print a new 3D piece. This piece was needed for the experiment Mega-Ares which aims at measuring the magnetic field of Mars. We were supposed to install this experiment with the LOAC and the weather station but we needed a piece to assemble the mast with the base. At the time I am writing this the 3D printer is still at work and we all hope it will be a success so that we can schedule an EVA this week to finally install this cool experiment!

Ok, I think it is now time for me to show you what we talked about during Marion’s interview this morning!

– “Today, we are going to interview Marion Burnichon. Hello Marion, how are you?

– I’m good, how are you?

– Great thanks! So, Marion is our crew biologist, Greenhab officer and executive officer/vice commander and we are going to talk a bit about each role, about the MDRS mission, etc. Are you ready?

– Yes!

-So first, for people who may not know you, could you present yourself?

-Yes, so previously, I did a bachelor of science in Physics at McGill University and performed research in astrophysics. I realized that I would prefer sending telescopes or humans to space rather than study stars directly. So, I decided to get my Master’s degree in aerospace engineering at ISAE-SUPAERO. During this time, I did my research project in mission analysis for a CubeSat mission to the Moon. This allowed me to do an internship at Airbus in trajectory optimisation for resupply missions to the Lunar Gateway space station. Now, I work on the flight dynamics team at OneWeb, on a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit.

– Ok great! So now Marion, I would like for us to talk about your role on the crew. First, you were given the title of biologist. Can you tell us more?

– Yes, so the role of biologist is not a required role by the MDRS but is still an interesting one in this mission. Since it is not mandatory, the type of projects or experiments done under the umbrella of this role is quite large. In my case, I decided to have four experiments, one on sleep, another on water quality, a third on human factors, TELEOP, and the last one is in collaboration with Spacemedex on human physiology. In my case, with the duality of vice-commander, I interpreted this role as Crew scientist in addition to my experiments. This meant that I spent time with each member of the crew to look at their experiments to check that they were pertinent scientifically, useful for the mission and feasible in the MDRS. After that, I would also help, if they needed, to develop the scientific protocols.

– The role of vice-commander, we will talk about it later so first let’s talk about the role of Greenhab officer that you took up for this mission since our official Greenhab officer Raphael could not make it. How is it going?

– Yes, unfortunately, our Greenhab officer could not come with us due to visa issues and as I explained before, my role as crew biologist was not mandatory, so I officially took up the role of Greenhab officer as this one is required. In a sentence, I take care of the greenhouse and its plants. Every morning, after our sport, I go directly to the greenhouse and check the temperature to know if I should allow for cooler air to come in. I then water the plants immediately. The earlier I can do this, the better. It will allow the plants to absorb more water before it evaporates due to the heat. During the day, I will come back when I have time to harvest some vegetables or herbs for cooking. It gives us something fresh to eat. Generally, I also come back at night to water the plants when the temperature has dropped significantly.

– So, on top of these two roles that you took up for this mission, you are also executive officer/vice commander of the crew. What does this role entail?

– This role was important during the preparation of the mission considering we could not rely on our commanding officer as much during this phase. In this role, I organised different aspects of the mission trying to anticipate the tasks that had to be done and delegating or collaborating on different tasks with crew members. With my role of biologist, I was already very present in many of the experiments of the crew. Since I was treasurer of the Club, I was also present in all of the budgeting and sponsoring aspect of the mission. So it ended up being a role that came naturally before I was even nominated for it. I thought it was a hard role to take up because I often ended up taking hard decisions for the crew when our commanding officer wasn’t there to do it. For example, we had to take the decision to cancel the mission for 2021 because of COVID, this decision came from me and was hard to bring up/discuss during the meeting. The border for coming into the USA was still closed to Europeans and France had just put a ban for leaving the French territory. Some crew members still wanted to show up to the airport and see if we would get through but from the logistical side, that would imply putting ¼ of the budget at risk which was not a good idea. And from a human point of view, I believe that the deception of being turned away at the airport would have been huge and we could not have gone back for another year of preparation to come back in 2022 like we did. It was hard to take up this role and the responsibility it came with…

– It’s true that it was a hard decision to take because we had been working on this mission for a year and most of the crew still wanted to believe that we would make it, that the borders would reopen… But it is true that it was a good idea to stop earlier and to take a step back on this situation to be able to start another year of preparation. It was necessary. Marion, a more personal question, why did you want to participate in an MDRS mission?

– In an ideal world, I would like to work for a space agency to manage human spaceflight, work with astronauts on their journey or even calculate trajectories for human spaceflight. I decided to join the Club MARS and more specifically the MDRS mission because it was a unique chance to put myself in the shoes of an astronaut. It would allow me to try to understand what can be difficult and what can be problematic for crewed missions. It is important for me to understand this to be able to face and solve these problems better.

– That makes sense. Do you see yourself on the other side of the mirror as an astronaut?

– I have asked myself that question many times and I don’t know if I have the courage or the nerves to be an astronaut. These people are so calm under stress and I don’t know if I have that quality. But in the end, I have realised that it’s not as much the part of “being in space” that attracts me to being an astronaut. I would want to be an astronaut for the scientific aspect. I had a lot of trouble choosing between Physics, Chemistry and Biology in school and being able to work with researchers at the top of their field on different types of experiments is what blows my mind. The other part that interests me is communication. Just look at Thomas Pesquet, he has so much impact on the younger generation, on their education and on our world… I find it amazing that it comes from someone with a science background.

– Last question, what is your favourite part of the day?

– My favourite moment is the communications window that takes place between 7 and 9pm where we send our reports and our photos to the MDRS staff. Maybe, this is telling that I miss communicating with the outside world but having feedback on your work and reports is nice! Receiving a “I can’t wait to reading your next report”, “you took some really nice pictures today”, or “you are doing great work” is always nice to hear. Every day, we work and send reports to be put online on our website and our social media but without the MDRS staff, we have no feedback on our work. It is nice to have encouragements or congrats after a day of work!

– I agree with you! Alright so this interview is over, thank you so much for your time, it was really nice!

– Thank you for doing this!”

That is the end of this interview, a longer version will be uploaded on YouTube but I will tell you more about that later! In any case I hope you enjoyed this episode of « Interview with ». I personally really enjoyed doing it and I can’t wait for the next one which is coming soon! See you in tomorrow’s report which will be a « Focus on » so stay tuned!

[end]