Crew 283 – New Horizons II
Mission Plan and Aims
10/16/2023-10/20/2023
Crew 283 (New Horizons II) consists of seven undergraduate and high school level students, along with a highly experienced commander. Our aim is to gain research experience and improve our skills at maintaining a Martian simulation. This is our second mission, the first was focused on how to perform a successful sim, this second one being mostly research based.
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Sergii Iakymov – Commander
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Owen Flanagan – Executive Officer
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Charis Adams – Health and Safety Officer
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Ian Davis – Engineer
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Micah Callaham – Operations Officer
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Riley Nuttycombe – Spacesuit Officer
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Hope Lea – Communications Officer
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Barnabas Pasztor – GreenHab Officer
Each student has prepared a research project on a topic of their interest to work on in this environment throughout the mission. Topics range from mental health to meteorology, with a lot in between. As students, we hope to learn and improve from our experience during this sim, and adapt to what we have to work with. The projects are as follows
Owen Flanagan:
Unspecified project pertaining to the mental health of the crew.
Charis Adams:
Health science project with the goal of monitoring the crew’s health, vitals, and performance. Specific goals include looking at respiratory and circulatory health throughout sim, and examining the effects of a Martian environment on overall human health.
Ian Davis:
Drone project involving scouting out locations for EVAs and searching for desert varnish and desert pavement from the sky. Tied to project with Callaham.
Micah Callaham:
Desert varnish and desert pavement identification and research, linked to Davis’s project. Logging locations that are prevalent in each of those two items.
Riley Nuttycombe:
Space suit prototype project. Testing and improving helmet design for space suits, comparing original suit helmets to new prototypes, and specifically improving the ventilation system in the suit helmets.
Hope Lea:
Radio Mesh Network optimization project. Measuring the solar intake, battery charge, and distance capacity between beacons for future weather stations.
Barnabas Pasztor:
Maintaining GreenHab and restoring the soil and systems in order to plant this year’s crop.
We will be documenting our mission over video, so as to best demonstrate the extent of our research. Our communications officer will compile videos of our work that will be displayed at the end of the mission.
We plan to conduct at least one EVA a day, with a second being optional. Primary EVAs will take place in the morning, secondary in the afternoon. No more than two EVAs per day unless an emergency warrants it. These EVAs are for research purposes only, and are aligned with one or more crew member’s projects.
In conclusion of our mission, we hope to have gained valuable research experience and a better understanding of how a Mars mission should function.