Journalist Report – April 13th

"Getting grounded" Journalist Report
Crew 245 Journalist report 13 April 2022
Sol: 03
Name of person filing the report: Dr. Benjamin Pothier

This is Sol 3 for our team and we have already reached our cruise speed in terms of carrying out and planning our experiments in the field. Despite the constraints of the Martian environment and the food and water restrictions, the crew has adapted well to our new normal. I personally plan to take my next shower in a couple of days and we all understand that every resource is precious here. It’s all about ISRU, or In-Situ Resource Utilization and I’m sure that we will all be more and more creative in the next couple of days with what we have at hand in order to enhance and optimize our performances, be it during cooking, DNA analysis or drone photogrammetry.

Everyone is important in our team because the success of our mission, from our comfort to plain survival, depends on each and every skill. If Buckminster Fuller spoke about the "Spaceship Earth" in 1969, our station is our Spaceship, a very grounded one, because the environment around us is hostile, and in Space, everything tries to kill you. We don’t go outside without our spacesuits and we need to plan and rationalize our use of each and every resource that is available to us.

I joined our Crew Scientist Simone and our Health and Safety officer Nadia during an Extra-Vehicular Activity this morning, documenting their process of soil sampling for an upcoming DNA analysis experiment. This afternoon our Commander Vittorio with our Crew Engineer Luca and our Executive Officer Luca installed a ground station antenna that should let us communicate with some satellites in the next couple of days.

I can’t wait to collaborate further with all those crew members on the several projects that we have planned. Civilization was always about collaboration on Earth, and it is the same in our small resilient community. We are slowly getting grounded on Mars and I can’t wait for the next sunrise.

Crew Journalist Over and out.

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