Sol: 10
Author’s name: Helen Eifert, Crew Geologist
Title: Pie in the Sky
This evening, we were graced with our first bit of snow on Mars. A martian snowfall consists of carbon dioxide rather than water and the flakes are cubical! This snow only occurs at the poles, where human presence would be difficult, so how we managed to wind up here is a gosh dang mystery. Hopefully we find our way back towards the equator by the morning to squeeze in our final space walks on the red planet.
I am happy to report that Crew 271 has made it one full day without any injuries. A true feat with the IMARS team apparently, particularly in the lower leg region. At this point in the mission, we’ve all found our comfortable routines in close quarters with each other. Today was largely uneventful due to poor weather in the forecast and no scheduled EVAs as a result. In space we always prefer safe over sorry. A productive start to the mission afforded us this leisure as we wrapped up many of our research projects indoors.
Grete started building her amateur movie making career in putting together the feature length film titled “Pain! Pain! Pain!: An Astronomical Accident.” Eifert took the excitement of watching dirt dry indoors, this time baking it an oven. This ordeal is 100% less fun than baking cookies because despite the geologist inclination to taste samples, there’s no sweet treat to eat at the end. Levesque and Guariniello took to writing today. Marc tell me edting is keY. Iakymov ensured the Hab stayed standing and everything was operational. Meanwhile Kaosaar set up cameras around the Hab to observe us all day.
It’s wild that we are almost ready to return to Earth, just in time for the new year. Cesare treated us to pizza for dinner tonight. We literally enjoyed pie in the sky. We’ll be returning to Mars in 2023 to start an interplanetary franchise of planetary pizza parlors. Cesare will be the chef, Alicyn will source the greens and run marketing, Sergii will maintain the appliances, Andres will be our designated fly on the wall, and Marc will get stuck doing the dishes again as usual. As for me, I guess I will just watch the pizzas bake in the oven and jot some things down.